Stepping Stones
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, HPGW het. Fourshot. Harry thought he might as well marry Ginny, since he couldn't fall in love with anyone at all. And then he fell in love with Draco Malfoy. COMPLETE.
1. The First Step

**Title: **Stepping Stones (1/4)

**Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Ginny, Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione

**Warnings: **Sex (het and slash), infidelity, angst.

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Harry agreed to marry Ginny because he honestly believed that he couldn't fall in love with anyone. And then he found himself falling in love with Draco Malfoy. From there, the next steps may be inevitable.

**Author's Notes: **This is the first part of a four-part story. I can't say when the other parts will be posted, since the chapters will all be different lengths. The title comes from the steps along the way.

**Stepping Stones**

_Chapter One—The First Step_

It wasn't long after the war when Harry decided something was wrong with him.

It wasn't something he could _explain, _or it would probably have come out in one of his drunken, late-night chats with Ron. Or he would have dragged himself to Hermione, the way he always did when his problems got too big, and confessed it. Hermione would have listened with pinched eyebrows, hammered more of his problem out of him, sighed, and finally given him good advice.

Instead, he kept it to himself and thought about it until he could put it into simple words, where it went like this:

He couldn't fall in love with people.

Oh, he'd tried. Right after the war, it seemed like it would be a good idea to fall in love with Ginny. She was there, after all, and she looked at him with such worship that even Harry, who was oblivious to that sort of thing most of the time, had to notice. And Harry knew that Ron had decided not to object. And Hermione was Ginny's best friend. It would have worked.

It _should _have worked

But it didn't. Harry went on several dates with Ginny, and still didn't feel anything. Oh, he could smile when she smiled, laugh when she told jokes, and listen in true sympathetic horror when she told him stories about what had happened at Hogwarts during the war. He could hold her hand and smile at the people who winked knowingly at them from the corners of the Three Broomsticks.

But it wasn't more than that. Harry didn't feel the sensation of fireworks bursting in his chest when he looked at Ginny that Ron had described happening to _him_ when he looked at Hermione. He didn't want to kiss her all the time, the way that Neville did with Hannah Abbot. He didn't stare at her, practically drooling, the way Blaise Zabini did with Daphne Greengrass.

He tried to tell himself that everyone was different, and just because he wasn't Ron or Neville or Zabini didn't mean he couldn't fall in love. He would just fall in love the way Harry Potter did it, that was all.

But nothing happened, still.

There was no passion. After Harry broke up with Ginny—he couldn't lead her on anymore—he tried to look at other women. He got drunk and looked at them. He took strong potions and looked at them. He wanked and thought of them. In desperation, he wanked and thought of men.

It didn't work. There was still never anything more than the momentary pleasure. Harry could have gone the rest of his life without dating or marrying anyone, and he thought he would be just as well off.

He wondered if something had been damaged in him when he died and came back after defeating Voldemort. But that wasn't the sort of thing he could ask about. Ron would clap him on the back and tell him that of _course _that hadn't happened, and then look at Harry with an uneasy glance for weeks or months. Hermione would burst into tears, which would confirm that she had feared some of the same things.

Harry had enough to deal with—Auror training, NEWTs, people screaming in his face for imaginary sins and even more imaginary acts of heroism—without adding that. He just kept the worry to himself and turned it over, wearing it down with the handling of his thoughts, until he could admit that it was probably the truth.

It was just the way he was, the way George was missing an ear. In a way, it was almost a relief to admit it. No more lying awake in the night, staring up at the ceiling, and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him.

And then it became a problem of what to do about Ginny, who was obviously and distractedly in love with him.

* * *

"Maybe you should find someone else, Gin."

Harry hesitated at the entrance to the Burrow's kitchen. He'd been coming to see if Hermione needed any help with the dishes after dinner; Molly was still hugging George, who'd announced that he was engaged to Angelina Johnson tonight, and so hadn't done them herself.

He hadn't known Ginny was here. And although it wasn't the best or most ethical thing to do, he leaned against the doorframe and listened.

"I don't _want _to find someone else." Ginny's voice was quiet, but definite. It was the tone Harry had heard her use when her parents wanted her to do something else besides being an Auror. Harry himself thought she only wanted to be one because he was in the training program right now, but her parents had tried to talk her out of it because she was a girl. Harry could have told them that that was the wrong way to handle this particular stubbornness.

"But what if he never notices you?" Hermione sounded desperate. "I like Harry, he's my best friend, but he's not that _observant, _Ginny. You could pine yourself to death over him, and he'd attend your funeral politely and obliviously."

Harry scowled and folded his arms. He didn't think he was _that _bad. He had noticed that Ginny still wanted him, after all. He just didn't have a clue what to do about it.

"Then I'll die," Ginny said, and abruptly laughed, so abruptly that Harry jumped a little. "God, Hermione, you're melodramatic. Who dies of a broken heart outside of romance novels?"

Harry smirked. He could practically feel Hermione blushing.

"I'm just concerned about you, that's all," Hermione muttered. "I think you should find someone else because Harry can never give you what you deserve."

"I think there are some people who only fall in love once," Ginny said in a thoughtful voice. Harry heard a slight scraping sound, as if she were drying a plate with a towel. "I'm one of them. Yes, Harry doesn't look at me. That doesn't mean I need to look at other people. I want to be in love with him, and if that ever changes, I don't think it'll be my doing."

Harry closed his eyes and stood very still. Distantly, he could hear Hermione protesting, trying to reassure Ginny that she could love someone else without being unfaithful to Harry, since Harry had never given her anything to be unfaithful about, and Ginny's calm responses.

He wasn't in love with anyone. He never would be. By that point, he had accepted that about himself.

Why couldn't he give Ginny what she wanted, and make her happy?

And he would gain something, too—a loyal friend, someone who would be happy to be married to him, someone who had shared a lot of the same experiences Harry had and shared the same adopted family. That would be enough. Harry would have wished for love and passion, sure, a grand romance like the one his parents had had, but he wasn't going to have it.

The only reason to refuse would have been if he had thought his damage from Voldemort would make him hurt Ginny—or if he couldn't think of a way to get Ginny to accept his proposal. But he had a plan for the proposal already, and he hadn't noticed any sign that Voldemort's effect on him was really making him behave strangely, except in that one way.

So he opened the door and walked into the kitchen, pretended to ignore Hermione and Ginny's blushes and guilty looks, and picked up a towel to help as he'd intended. Yes, they could have dried the dishes with magic, but this way let them stay in each other's presence longer.

And it let Harry have a chance to give Ginny lingering glances and gentle smiles, while he made sure their hands brushed as often as possible. By the end of the evening, Ginny's cheeks seemed permanently red and she stammered every time she spoke to him.

Harry left the house that evening with a smile. Ginny would be happy, and he would be content. That was enough.

* * *

"Are you sure that you mean this, Harry? Because I couldn't bear it if you didn't."

Harry leaned forwards and took Ginny's hands. She sat across the table from him, her eyes burning with both hope and fear. Harry had made sure that he had many candles lit before he invited Ginny to his house, and there was soft, rich food on the table—ordered from the Leaky Cauldron, of course, but at least Harry had chosen things he knew she would like. And there were glasses of wine, and a moment ago, there had been kisses.

Ginny had melted in his arms. But now she was sitting back in her chair, her gaze fixed on him as if he were a mystery that she needed to solve. Harry rubbed her knuckles gently and gave her the truth.

"I want you to marry me. I feel like I've always wanted that," he added honestly. The times that he hadn't wanted that, he hadn't wanted anything at all.

Ginny bit her lip, trembled for a moment as though she would start forwards, and then held herself back again. "But do you _love _me?"

Harry nodded. That was easy enough to say. Of course he loved Ginny, cared about her welfare, and wanted her to be happy.

If she had asked him about _passion, _now…

Harry squirmed in his chair. Sometimes he felt as if he was lying to Ginny, but he didn't know what else he could do. She was miserable without him, and she would condemn herself to loneliness if Harry didn't marry her. He knew that. He also knew, since he'd overheard her conversation with Hermione, that she had no intention of changing her mind. So what other solution was there?

Ginny lowered her eyes to the table and sat there studying the reflections of the candles in the wood for a moment. "Can you say it?" she whispered.

Harry bent his head to kiss her knuckles as he answered. "I love you," he said, and said it again after the first series of kisses. "I love you." Another series of them. "I love you—"

Ginny rose to meet him this time, hurling herself across the table and fastening her lips on his.

Harry rose with his arms around her neck, and escorted her towards the bed. He had always known this evening was going to end there, unless Ginny refused him altogether and stormed out the door. The only thing he was worried about was his lack of passion for anyone. He had arousal potions that he could take, but he hoped that he wouldn't need them.

As it turned out, it wasn't a problem. Harry's flesh responded to Ginny's shy touches, and he could make up for his slowness by the fervency of his kisses and the intensity of the way he touched _her_. Ginny shuddered and cried out soon enough, and then reached out for him as she lay, panting, in the bed. Harry knelt beside it, smiling and licking his lips as he watched her.

He _had _liked watching her come, he told himself. Surely that had to mean _something_.

"Come here," Ginny whispered.

Harry shifted over and above her. She parted her legs eagerly, gazing up at him as though he was a hero, a savior, her personal hero and personal savior. Harry shuddered from the appeal and hope in her eyes, and slipped inside her more tenderly than he had thought he would.

Yes, in a way he was deceiving her. He didn't feel the kind of love that she thought he did; he wasn't caught up in a whirlwind romance like his parents or nursing a long crush like she was. But she didn't have anything to worry about, because Harry would be utterly faithful to her. He would never feel that romance or crush for anyone else, and that meant he could settle for second best, while making sure Ginny got the best.

And his body found the sensation of sex pleasant enough, even if his brain still thought it was nothing to write home about, and as they lay together afterwards, panting, Ginny took his hand in hers and started whispering plans for their future life together.

Harry found that part the most pleasant of all.

* * *

"Are you sure that you want to do this, mate?"

Harry blinked, turning around. He had spoken with Ron about proposing to Ginny earlier that evening, and Ron had laughed and pounded him on the back as if his dearest wish was coming true. George had been full of good-will since he'd just proposed himself, and Bill, the only other brother at the Burrow tonight, had practically crushed Harry's hand with his grip. Molly and Arthur were still wiping away tears. Harry had assumed everything was settled.

But here was Ron, his mouth set in tight lines. Harry moved aside so that he could lean on the garden fence, too, but Ron didn't. He just stood there, arms folded, his stare boring holes through Harry.

"Of course I am," Harry said. "You know that I broke up with her once. I wouldn't have got back together with her again if I wasn't sure."

"It's just that…" Ron let his voice trail off and stared up at the stars. Harry looked up with him, but couldn't see anything special.

"It's just that," Ron went on, after a silence long enough that it had started to wear on Harry's nerves, "I never suspected you would come back to her. You ignored her for so long. And then you started paying attention to her as though someone had kicked you. Why?" He finally leaned an elbow on the fence, but only so he could stare at Harry.

"I thought she would get over loving me," Harry said, "and then I realized she wouldn't." There. Simple enough, without getting into the way he was damaged from Voldemort.

Ron waited. Then he said, "So you're only doing this for her?"

Harry shook his head. "No. I love her, and there's no one I'd rather marry."

Ron waited again. Harry scowled at him this time and shoved his hands into his robe pockets. He didn't like the questions Ron was asking him, because it made _him_ start questioning things, and he knew that couldn't be good. He already knew nothing would change. This inability to feel passion was just part of the price he had paid to defeat Voldemort. It could have been a lot worse.

Ron sighed and reached out to put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "I was waiting for you to fall in love like me and Hermione did, I reckon," he said at last, his grin breaking across his face. "I was waiting for some grand declaration of love and explosion of passion. But you're allowed to fall in love in other ways, too."

Harry grinned back at him, glad the dangerous moment was past. "It would be hard to fall in love as dramatically as you two did. I'm not about to kiss Ginny before a final battle against evil."

"That was something, wasn't it?" Ron said fondly, and then they started discussing memories, standing in the Burrow's garden, with a mild spring wind blowing past them and the gentle spring stars above.

The door finally opened, and Ginny and Hermione came out to find them. Hermione was beautiful enough for a lot of people's tastes, Harry had to admit, stepping forwards with a smile on her face and her curly brown hair blowing around her to take Ron in her arms.

But it was Ginny Harry embraced, smaller than Hermione but fiercer, and hers was the future he would join.

* * *

Cameras flashed madly. Long red hair blew in the wind as Ginny tried to tuck her golden veil over her face and stay in Harry's arms at the same time. People laughed and tossed spells at them that changed to showers of golden sparks and good-luck tokens in mid-air. Harry could feel the bond between him and Ginny pulsing like the purring belly of a cat.

It was his wedding, and despite the press lining up along the borders of the Burrow's protected garden, Harry couldn't be happier.

It had been everything he ever dreamed of, to dress up in the golden robes and walk down an aisle of smiling Weasley relatives to speak his vows to Ginny. The wizard waiting to join them had beamed at him. Hermione was weeping, and yet trying to give him last-minute advice through her tears. Molly had already made Harry glad that the wedding robes weren't white, because she would have covered his with her tearstains if they were.

And Ginny…

Ginny had waited for him, her head tilted back, her red hair tamed and coiled gently around her neck under the silken hood. Her eyes were wide with longing and her cheeks gently flushed. She had taken Harry's hand when he came up beside her and squeezed it, twice, under the edges of their robes where no one would see.

It was everything he had ever dreamed of.

Now they were running back down the aisle of Weasley relatives, and Ginny was laughing and shaking her head as the golden light flew everywhere around them, and Harry gave in to impulse—or the memory of a photograph in the album Hagrid had given him—and snatched Ginny up in his arms.

She laughed and clung to his neck. They couldn't do anything today without laughing, and that was fine with Harry. There used to be a time when he thought laughter was over, the bleakest time of his life.

This was the brightest.

Ginny in his arms, Harry ran down the plush, scarlet carpet that had unfolded over the grass, and past Ron and Hermione, jumping and waving madly, and Arthur trying to hug them both at once, and Bill and Fleur with their two little girls on their shoulders to see, and Charlie tossing them a dragon-shaped amulet that Ginny snatched out of the air, and Molly shedding more tears than Harry had realized could come from human eyes, and George and Angelina letting off fireworks, and Percy looking awkward and smug, and the press clicking their cameras, into the future.

It was everything he had ever dreamed of.

Only later did he realize that that wasn't saying much. He didn't have many dreams anymore.

* * *

That was the first step.


	2. The Second Step

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—The Second Step_

"I'm excited. Are you excited?" Ginny paused uncertainly in front of Harry and abruptly flushed. "Please tell me you are. I don't want to be alone when I sound like an idiot."

Harry laughed and kissed her. As it always did, that made Ginny melt against him with a little sigh. Her hands tightened on his arms, and she gave an unsubtle wriggle of her hips. Harry had to pull back, though. "I'm excited," he said, angling his groin so that Ginny could feel the truth of that, "but they're going to announce our new partners in five minutes."

"I could be quicker than five minutes." Ginny looked up at him, eyes blazing with challenge. Harry would probably have given in and taken her up on that if he'd been a different man.

But he wasn't, and in fact it was sometimes hard to feign the passion needed to make sure Ginny didn't get suspicious. He caressed her hair instead and murmured, "I think we need to wait and celebrate tonight."

"If they let us." Ginny abruptly stepped away from him and began to pace around the small, blank waiting room, staring at the walls in hostility. Harry looked with her, but didn't see anything to worry about. The walls had no decorations and there were only hard benches, but that was the Ministry for you; they would try to bore you to death during your wait. "They _have _to partner us together, don't they, Harry?"

Harry blinked at the sudden appeal. "Of course," he said. He was the one who had doubted that during the process of their training, not Ginny. "They have no reason not to. We love each other, and they know how well we work together."

"But that's not always enough." Ginny buried her head against his chest. "In fact, I heard the Aurors split up people who love each other, because they think that husbands and wives can't be objective about each other's safety."

Harry privately thought that might be a good thing; Ginny needed to learn how to stand on her own two feet more. She was so dependent on him that it frightened him sometimes.

On the other hand, it _did _lead him to be extra careful of her heart, and now wasn't the moment when she needed to hear criticism. He folded his arms around her shoulders and spoke gently. "We'll do the best we can. And if the only qualification was that we were spouses, I'm sure they wouldn't consider it. But we _do _fight well together. That has to count for a lot."

Ginny stopped squirming around anxiously and relaxed, peering up at him. "You're right," she said. "Of course you're right."

She looked so bright-eyed and happy at the moment that Harry couldn't resist. He bent down to kiss her.

"Mr. Potter. Mrs. Potter."

Harry felt Ginny stiffen guiltily in his arms. She always seemed to assume that someone would blame her for kissing and touching her own husband, and would have beaten a hasty retreat if Harry let her. But Harry kept his arms in place, and looked up with a leisurely air, as if his heart hadn't suddenly started to pound.

The Auror who waited for them at the door was a tall man with a narrow face, dark eyes, and pierced ears in which silver hoops hung. He surveyed them with resigned distaste before he gestured. "You are to come."

Harry squeezed Ginny's hand, smiled at her reassuringly, and followed Auror Hitchens. He could disapprove all he liked, but then, he disapproved of teenagers kissing, too. Just because he didn't have a life didn't mean other people had to avoid having one in front of him.

They filed down a dim corridor and into a sudden blaze of brightness. Harry blinked, tilting his head back to study the ceiling. An enchanted illusion hung there that mimicked the one in Hogwarts' Great Hall, and right now it glared with sunlight.

The room itself had white stone walls, Harry saw when he looked about him, like a slightly more interesting and considerably larger version of their waiting rooms. Auror Hitchens waved his hand, and Harry and Ginny hurried to join the nearest forming line in the middle of the wooden floor. Trainees rustled their robes all around them, coughed nervously, and dragged at their sleeves or scratched random itches as if that could somehow lessen their nervousness.

Harry saw Ron at the end of the first row, eyes wide, and nodded to him with a smile. If he wasn't assigned to Ginny, Harry knew where he would be going.

They faced the front as more and more trainees hurried in to join them. Harry shook his head at the number, but then remembered something his trainers had told him yesterday. The Auror program was only formally three years; in practice, the Aurors put some trainees through a longer period of lessons and some through a shorter. They would wait to assign partners and end the training until a sufficiently large number were considered to be ready. If that meant some people got extra education, well, that did no harm as far as the Aurors were concerned.

Harry had heard that the selection process was somewhat mystical, but he didn't think so, particularly when Aurors in scarlet robes—some of them people he recognized, some those he didn't—entered the room through wide wooden doors without any kind of magical artifact like the Goblet of Fire or the Sorting Hat. They stood in front of the trainees, hands folded behind their backs, and studied them with hard faces.

Ginny gulped audibly. Harry squeezed her hand again and wished he could whisper a reassurance without looking unprofessional. If they had come this far, they wouldn't be cast out of the program. The Aurors also saw no use in wasting time on someone who would never be what they were looking for.

Gradually, the trainees stopped filing in, the doors shut, and silence settled over the room. Auror Hitchens broke it, stepping forwards. His earrings swung as he jerked his head back and forth.

"Auror Ron Weasley." He infused distaste into his words, Harry thought, as if there were two trainees born Weasley just to spite him. "Auror Donald Greyborn. Come forwards."

Harry applauded as Ron and Greyborn made their way up to the front, partially because they would be a good match—Greyborn was calm and steady and would balance Ron's temper—and partially because now he _knew _who his partner would be.

Sure enough, there was nothing mystical. The full Aurors simply gave Ron and Greyborn their new robes and made them swear an oath on their wands to uphold the laws of the wizarding world and hunt Dark wizards and witches.

Ginny leaned against him. Harry stroked her hair and listened as more names were called and more people went through the minor ritual. Neither his nor Ginny's names had come up yet, but he was resigned. It was a huge group, much larger than he had thought, and included plenty of people he hadn't trained with or even seen during his years in the program.

"Auror Harry Potter."

Harry straightened, a sharp tingle making its way through his chest. The right to that name was something he had fought for for three years. Ginny giggled next to him, probably out of nervousness or amusement at the expression on his face, and then hushed.

"Auror Draco Malfoy."

The bottom fell out of the world.

Harry turned his head, feeling as though it moved by slow ticks, like the hand on a watch. Ginny was gasping silently beside him, so wounded that she hadn't even made a sound yet. Harry stroked her back automatically, but for the first time since their marriage, his priority wasn't her. He needed to find—he needed to see—

And yes. There he was, looming up above the crowd, taller than Harry remembered, turning his head in a crown of pale light and staring at Harry in defiance, in contempt, in disbelief.

Draco Malfoy.

Harry knew his life had changed. He simply refused to accept it.

* * *

"There must be something you can do."

Miriam Wellington, the Auror who had recruited Harry for the program and the one who he suspected of being in charge of choosing most of the partner teams, only smiled serenely and folded her hands on her desk. "I'm sorry, Auror Potter," she said, emphasizing his title a little. "There's nothing. The partnership decisions that we have made are final, at least until the time that a year has passed and we've been able to see that our choices definitely will not work."

"But of _course _it won't work," Harry snapped, and then shut his mouth. He had intended to be as calm as Wellington always was and impress her with his rationality.

What had happened to that plan? Most of the time, he had no trouble in being as calm as he pleased. Ron and Hermione and Ginny had all complained in the last year that he was too unemotional if he was anything.

"Why not?" Wellington leaned forwards, frosty blue eyes bright for once, as if she was actually interested in his answer.

Harry reminded himself of what mattered here—which wasn't his stupid curiosity—and forged ahead. "Auror Malfoy and I had a rivalry at school." He was proud of himself for remembering that he had to give Malfoy a title too, now. "He personally injured or tried to injure several of my friends, and he disliked me for refusing his hand in friendship. I know that he won't have forgiven that."

"Have you asked him that?" Wellington asked levelly.

"What?" Harry stared at her. "Of course not! I'm working off _common fucking sense, _here."

"Auror Potter." Wellington looked more shocked and stern than angry. "You will _not _use such language to me."

Harry lowered his head, feeling his cheeks burn. He was glad that no one besides Wellington was in the room. He hadn't lost his temper like that in a long time.

Since the war, in fact.

What was it about Malfoy that could destabilize him like this?

Harry took a deep breath and lifted his gaze. If he was smart, if he was canny, he could use his outburst for the greater good, the way that he had used his own inability to feel passion for it. "I am sorry, Auror Wellington," he said, with his best attempt at humility. "I didn't mean to do that. But you can see why we can't work together as partners. Even if Auror Malfoy has forgiven me, I'm not myself around him. I'm a bit childish, in fact."

Wellington was silent, studying him so long that Harry expected questions. But she only asked him one, and then only after long minutes of a scrutiny so intense it hurt his face. "Do you know how we placed you together as partners?"

"No, Auror," Harry said. He hesitated, then took a risk. "I had assumed I would be partners with my wife, since we worked so well together."

"Skill is not the only measurement we use, though it is an important one." Wellington placed her fingers together. "We study the ways that Aurors interact, fight, argue, and investigate in the challenges placed before you during your training. And we also look for your weaknesses." She gave Harry a wry look. "I'm sure that you remember the interviews over the years."

Harry nodded. He had been interviewed when he first entered the program, of course, but also many other times over the three years he'd been here. They had asked him searching questions and shallow ones, personal ones and irrelevant ones. Each interview had been different, never repeating the same pattern of questions, so he'd never been quite sure what they were looking for.

"The interviews help us determine your weaknesses," Wellington said. "What you need, who you are dependent on, what would cause you to lose your temper." She studied him again. "Until today, I'd never seen you lose yours."

Harry shrugged. "Fighting a war reminds you what's really important and what's not," he said simply.

"It doesn't seem to have done much for your friend Weasley's temper."

"Ron's different," said Harry. He was tempted to ask why they hadn't chosen Ron for him, if Ginny was impossible, but he had the feeling that Wellington was getting around to an answer, so he sat silent.

"Yes." Wellington tapped her fingers together. "And the biggest weakness we have spotted in you, the biggest hole in your defenses and your personality, is that you lack passion."

Harry froze. "Pardon?" he asked when he could speak. He hoped he would sound offended, not panicked.

_Oh, God, someone noticed. What happens if they tell Ginny? What happens if she asks? What will I tell her when—_

Harry fought the questions away. That hadn't happened yet, and probably wouldn't ever. He said evenly, "I would have thought the solution was to partner me with my wife, Auror."

"Oh, no one questions your passion for her." Wellington waved her hand, leaving Harry to breathe easily once again. "But in day-to-day life, one can't miss it. You don't pay as much attention as you should. You do certain things flawlessly, but like an automaton. Meanwhile, Malfoy is bored by the competition that we hand him. We think that you would be stirred by being partnered with him, driven, and he would find a person who would not bore him."

Harry could see the logic. But he still thought it was faulty.

"That also sounds as if we could destroy each other, Auror, with all due respect," he said firmly.

"I know," Wellington said. "But we have chosen to take the risk. As I said, at the end of a year, if the partnership isn't working, then we can make another choice and transfer you."

Harry relaxed. He thought he could survive a year. Although, he did have to ask…

"What happens if Auror Malfoy tries to kill me before then?" he asked.

Wellington gave him a small smile. "If you have _proof_, then Auror Malfoy would be arrested, and of course the partnership would be dissolved," she said. "We do not tolerate our Aurors attacking each other, no matter the personal dispute or insult."

The warning in her eyes made Harry nod. He was protected against the worst Malfoy could do to him, and in the meanwhile, he would have to trust to the armor of his indifference to protect him from smaller dangers.

He was worried when he went home, though, for two reasons. First, an anxious Ginny would be waiting for him, and he didn't think she would be satisfied by Wellington's explanation.

Second, he still had no idea why the mere _mention _of working with Malfoy had infuriated him so much.

* * *

"But there must be _something _you can do."

Harry put his arms around Ginny and held her close, murmuring into her hair. They were in the big drawing room that had been the main attraction for Harry when they bought this house. He liked the motion of a chamber as big as the Gryffindor common room, with places for lots of chairs and tables and couches and a huge fireplace that made them feel warm just coming in.

He knew he was thinking about the room to avoid thinking about Ginny. He would have to stop that.

"I've tried," he said, while he thought about the fact that she had said "something you can do" and not "something we can do." "I went to talk to Wellington. She said that they chose Malfoy for my partner because they think we complement each other."

"What?" Ginny stepped away from him, the flush in her cheeks sudden and high. "That's ridiculous. _We _complement each other."

_No, we don't. I'm there, and you lean on me, and I let you._

It wasn't a new thought, but it _was _shocking, when Ginny was so upset. Harry bit hard at his lips, shook his head at himself, and firmed his embrace. "I know. I told her Malfoy and I would probably kill each other."

"And that didn't convince her?" Ginny frowned and plucked at his robe. "I don't understand. You're important."

_And so are you, and so's Malfoy, and all the other Aurors, _Harry thought, but he knew Ginny wouldn't see it that way.

"I tried," he repeated. "Wellington said that they'll make another decision in a year, but not before then, unless something drastic happens. If she won't change her mind because of a direct appeal, I'm not sure what _will _make her change it."

"Something has to."

Harry looked at her uneasily. Ginny's eyes were glittering and her mouth was clamped shut. The only time he'd seen her look like that, one of their trainers had accused her of cheating on the exams.

"We'll keep asking," he said, "but we may not break their deadlock." He had to prepare Ginny for failure, he knew, since she often didn't prepare herself. "How are you doing with Anna?"

Ginny shrugged without interest. "She'll do all right, I reckon." She'd been partnered with Anna Lebeck, a young, enthusiastic woman who Harry thought would make a good Auror. "But what are we going to do about their insanity? When do you have to meet him?"

"Tomorrow." Harry turned to hang his cloak up on its peg, wishing they really _could _talk about something else. Ginny's voice was like a needle prodding him in the back.

"Then it'll be up to you," Ginny said decisively. "Malfoy probably wants the chance to be an Auror, and he'll be too scared to rebel. But if you do something disruptive enough, they'll break up your partnership."

Harry turned to stare at her. "What?"

"I want you away from him." Ginny folded her arms as if she was cold. Harry thought she looked as though she was huddled against a fall of freezing rain. "Please, Harry. Anything you can do, anything it takes."

Harry's heart melted at the expression in her eyes, the way it always had. If Ginny was dependent on him, he thought, surely a large part of that was his own fault. And that meant it was his duty to tend to her, too, and make sure that she had what she needed to keep functioning.

Besides, it wasn't as though he _wanted _to be partnered to Malfoy.

"I don't want to do something that will get me thrown out of the Department," he said. "And even if I tried something bad enough to make them break up the partnership, that doesn't mean they would break up yours." Ginny opened her mouth, but Harry held up his hand and then continued. "But I don't think he'll want to stay with me, either. I'll try to talk to him, get him to agree to something. If we work informally with other people, and show that we're better that way than if we worked apart, I think the Aurors will let us switch partners."

Ginny smiled in a moment. "If you're sure that will work," she said.

"I'm not, but we'll try it," Harry said. He didn't want to get her hopes up. He didn't want to lie to her.

There was one great lie at the heart of his marriage: Ginny thought he felt the same overwhelming passion for her, the same crushing love, that she did for him. He didn't, but he had promised that she would always be happy and want for nothing. It was time to keep that promise, no matter how difficult it was.

* * *

"Malfoy."

The git was already in the office when Harry entered. He didn't pretend not to hear Harry, but did hold up a hand so that he could finish reading the report he was looking at. Harry stood still, studying him, and wondered if Ginny would say that he was already giving in too easily.

Malfoy had indeed grown taller than Harry remembered; it wasn't all shock from seeing him for the first time in years yesterday. But yes, his face was pointy, and his hair was still pale, if softer than before, so it looked like dandelion fluff. Harry was glad. It would make him easier to struggle with.

When Malfoy looked up at him, though, a shock passed through him. The eyes were different. Malfoy had a cold, pale clarity behind them, as though he knew exactly what he was capable of and no longer intended to take nonsense from anyone. Harry reckoned Auror training would make him that way.

"What did you want, Potter?" Malfoy's voice was like his eyes. "We should get moving soon. We've been assigned a case already, and you haven't read the report yet."

"Listen, Malfoy," Harry said, feeling awkward by comparison with the elegant, composed bastard, and clinging gladly to the sensation. It would make it easier for him to obey Ginny's instructions. "I wanted to strike a bargain with you."

Malfoy laughed, a sound like a shard of ice stabbing someone in the face. "What could you possibly have to offer me that I would _want_?"

Harry ground his teeth at the irritation that sound provoked, but told himself to play it calmly. "Freedom from me," he said. "I suggest we work together just shoddily enough that they assign us new partners."

Malfoy folded his hands behind his head and studied him instead of flying into a rage or agreeing immediately, the options Harry had thought most likely. Harry shuffled his feet under his gaze, and hated that, too.

"You dislike me that much?" Malfoy asked. "Even though we haven't worked together yet?"

Harry shook his head. He had forgotten most of his griefs and grudges from Hogwarts, though he thought being around Malfoy would remedy _that _right quick. "I want to be partnered with my wife that much."

Malfoy sneered at him. "I've watched you at practice," he said. "She's a substandard Auror. You, as much as it pains me to admit this, are not, or they would never have darted to partner you with me." He made that sound like a statement of fact. "You don't want to be with her. She'll drag you down."

"Don't say that about Ginny!" Harry snapped, and suddenly it was as if no years had passed since he saw Malfoy. His blood was up and surging through his veins, and his hands curled themselves into fists without his permission.

Malfoy sat up in his chair, but didn't reach for his wand, the way Harry thought he should. "Why not? It's true."

"She works just as hard as anyone else," Harry said, and moved one sliding step closer to Malfoy. His wand was drawn. When had _that _happened? He shook his head sharply and reminded himself that he wanted to break apart from Malfoy, not be kicked out of the Aurors himself for attacking a partner. "She casts her spells with as great a force as anyone else."

"True love is indeed blind," Malfoy said with a mocking smile, and Harry was glad that he didn't know the reason those words stopped Harry cold. "Open your eyes, Potter. She misses the target more often than not. She missed a lot of the classes, for that matter. She subdues suspects with too much eagerness. She's the kind who could justify going rogue to herself and then be indignant when she got arrested for breaking the Auror Code of Conduct."

Harry stared at Malfoy. He didn't want to remember the way that Ginny had tackled one of the other trainees who was playing a criminal during their last exercise and broken her arm. "And you care about things like that?"

"Yes," Malfoy said. "It was why I made up my mind to accept you as my partner. You'll run within the law. You'll obey the rules, at least as long as someone doesn't hurt an innocent in front of you. And Aurors, lucky us, are empowered to run after and hurt people who hurt innocents." He sneered, but Harry had the feeling it was an automatic expression, one that hid what he was really thinking.

"Obeying the rules is important to you," Harry said, rapping his fingers against his hip and trying to ignore the fact that Ginny would be betrayed, if she knew about this conversation, because he was talking about this instead of trying to defend her. "Why?"

Malfoy looked at him steadily. "You know what happened to my family after the war?"

"Fines," Harry said. "House arrest."

The tone he said it in implied that it was less than they'd deserved, and Malfoy's eyes flashed once. But unless it was his voice growing colder, he didn't seem to show the effect on him. "Yes. But more than that, we were warned that this was our last chance. Our contacts in the Ministry are exhausted. My father's reputation can't protect us anymore. If we do something else that's outside the law, we're all going to Azkaban, and it'll be for life."

In spite of himself, Harry winced. He remembered the way Sirius had looked when he mentioned Azkaban. He remembered the way Dementors felt.

Malfoy seemed to see something of that in his face, because he relaxed. "Yes. Well, I wanted to show willing, and I want to do the best I can to get my family out from under that hanging sentence. So I became an Auror. And if I have to have a partner who breaks the rules, I want one with a reputation that means we won't feel the consequences."

Harry nodded. "That makes sense."

Malfoy cocked his head. "You're more intelligent away from your wife's side that I'd realized. Of course, she probably keeps you there because she doesn't want you to outshine her. Thinking with your dick means you won't."

Harry gritted his teeth, and wondered why he had bothered asking for Malfoy's explanation and feeling sympathy. The bastard would never appreciate it.

"I could vouch for you to the Ministry," he said. "I didn't speak up enough during your family's trial, and I owe your mother a lot. Then you could have a different partner but the Aurors would know it wasn't your fault that our partnership didn't work out."

Malfoy abruptly surged to his feet. Harry, startled, tried to step back, but there wasn't much room in the office, and Malfoy confronted him without effort.

He stared down his nose, Harry saw, staring up. It was unfair that Malfoy was _still _taller than him. Harry knew he couldn't expect his starvation during childhood to have no consequences, but he'd got used to being taller than most people except Ron in his immediate circle. Malfoy _loomed._

"I want you as my partner," Malfoy said, very softly, so that someone pausing right behind the door would have trouble hearing him. "You're the one with the reputation and the skill at Defense Against the Dark Arts. You're the one who's mellowed in the last few years, they tell me, so that you no longer snap over every little thing the way you did in school. But you seem upset now. Were the rumors lies?"

"Rumor is always a lie," Harry said, trying to recover himself. "And don't you see? If I get angry at you so easily, then it's all the more reason we shouldn't be partners."

Malfoy gave him a darting, lizard-like smile. "You don't have to like me," he said. "You only have to work with me. And I've put up with a lot during the past three years. You'll have to make yourself intolerable before I give you up."

He slipped back to his desk and tossed the report he'd been reading to Harry as if nothing had happened. "Finish reading this, and we can go out."

Harry caught it with one hand—some reflexes were still alive in him although he hadn't played Quidditch in a long time—and stared at Malfoy. He only waited in his chair with a faintly bored expression, one cheek propped on his hand. The intense man with the propensity for shoving himself in people's faces from moments ago might never have existed.

Slowly, Harry opened the file. He would just have to find some way to mess up this case that they were working on, he told himself, some way that couldn't be traced back to him but would get their partnership dissolved. That was all.

* * *

"How did it go?" Ginny was dancing up to him the moment he came through the door, her eyes so wide and bright that they reminded Harry of the candles he'd had burning the first night they slept together.

Stalling for time, Harry hung up his cloak and then turned around and took her in his arms. Breathing in the scent of her hair helped to steady him. _This _was his real world, the center and heart of his being.

"Harry?" Ginny wrenched herself backwards and stood with her hands on his forearms, looking at him impatiently. "Are you still partners with Malfoy, or did you manage to win free?"

Harry shook his head. "Malfoy refused," he said. "He wants to stay in the Auror program and not break the rules because that would make people look at his family with more suspicion. If something happens between us, it will be all my fault."

Those simple words hid so much.

On the other hand, Harry had no way to tell Ginny about the way he'd fallen into stride with Malfoy as they were leaving the Ministry, the perfect way their steps matched, without thought—at least on his part. From the amused, sidelong glance Malfoy gave him, he had probably noticed and thought Harry was doing it on purpose. But Harry didn't figure that out until later.

How could he explain the way they questioned the witnesses to what looked like a simple jewelry robbery on the surface, but which hummed with darker magic underneath? Malfoy took the lead, while Harry loomed in the background and let the witnesses see his scar. And then he spoke to a few people who glared at Malfoy. Malfoy wasn't upset about that. He lounged against the nearest building and gave a cool smirk that disconcerted them. One person let slip more than she intended, and they found themselves on the trail of the thief—sure enough, a Dark wizard, Malfoy said knowledgeably, when he tested the air with a certain spell and found a residue there that formed as silver dust on the tip of his wand.

Harry should have made a joke then about how and why Malfoy knew that. He would never have passed up the chance in school. He wanted to say that he hadn't now because he was more mature than that, and he was caught up in the excitement of his first case.

Neither was true. Or not _entirely _true.

They'd cornered the Dark wizard in another jewelry shop, which he owned. And then, while Malfoy distracted him with "innocent" questions that the wizard thought were an offer of alliance, Harry crept in the back way and felled him with a Stunner.

All neat, all swift, all wrapped up within the first day. Harry ought not to feel so good about it, though, because this was a simple case and he knew that other Aurors solved cases faster than that all the time.

But how was he to tell Ginny about the silent moment in which he and Malfoy had stood over the limp thief and exchanged slow glances, or the smile that lingered at the corners of Malfoy's lips, or the little nod that he gave Harry before he said, "You'll do, Potter?"

"You'll have to do something else, then." Ginny's mouth twisted. "We'll think of something."

Harry put thoughts of Malfoy out of his head, and sat down to have a nice dinner with his wife and listen to her plots and plans. Of course he wanted to partner with her. They had planned on it all through their training, and it was ridiculous for the Aurors to take away their chance to both live and work together.

How could he explain the way his heart had bounded from that simple nod of Malfoy's, had given a knock against the inside of his chest that was like the proverbial knock of opportunity?

* * *

"He's going to come out cursing." Malfoy's voice was no more than a murmur in Harry's ear.

Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the dark doorway in front of them so that he wouldn't miss the slightest flicker of movement. They'd finally tracked the poisoner they were investigating to his lair; they would need evidence that he'd brewed poisons and tampered with healing potions to make an arrest. But they hadn't counted on the strength of his private wards or the fact that his house had only one entrance, meaning they couldn't both go in at once from front and back the way they liked to do.

At least the house was far away from any Muggle or wizard dwelling, in the middle of a desolate moor, Harry thought, trying to think of something positive to say about this case so far. That meant none of the curses would hit anyone else.

"Any ideas?" Malfoy leaned his elbow on the boulder they were crouching behind—wound with spells that disguised their presence from the poisoner—and leaned in towards Harry.

Harry took a moment he knew he shouldn't to enjoy the way Malfoy's closeness made the hairs on his arms and neck rise, then said, "Brute strength. He isn't going to come out unless the house is destroyed around him."

Malfoy raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And destroy all our evidence?"

Harry grinned at him. He enjoyed moments like this, when Malfoy spoke as if Harry were stupid, or at least missing the obvious. He wouldn't have enjoyed it in school, but that wasn't the point. They were different people now, and this would give Harry the chance to prove himself.

"Watch," he said simply, and pointed his wand around the rock, beginning a soft, steady chant. Malfoy watched, not making any attempt to interfere.

Harry had never thought he would see the day when Draco Malfoy _trusted _him.

The spell eddied out of his wand, surrounding the house with what looked like magical mud, blocking the shimmer of some of the wards. Harry altered the incantation a bit as he created the second layer, and Malfoy cocked his head. He still didn't know what Harry was doing, despite his greater knowledge of Latin.

That was gratifying.

Harry told himself he wasn't going to think about what else it was, and jerked his wand up in the air as he reached the end of the spell.

The spell glittered, the "mud" suddenly taking on golden highlights as if catching the sun, and then contracted. Harry heard the cracking and creaking of wood and raised a cautious shield around himself and Malfoy. Sure enough, splinters were flying through the air a moment later, some with force enough to chip off bits of the rock.

The spell was formed to destroy wood and ward energy, but nothing else. It would leave the poisoner undamaged—and all the potions in glass vials and metal cauldrons that he had with him.

"Magnificent," Malfoy breathed.

Harry grinned at him again, and tried not to preen. For once, instead of greedily watching the spell's effect the way he tended to, Malfoy had his eyes on Harry, and his gaze was warm and heavy-lidded. It made Harry tingle in odd places.

But then a weak cry caught their attention, and Harry turned his gaze back to where the house had stood. In a moment, he went still.

The poisoner was there, yes, a desperate-looking man with wild dark hair in a ragged purple robe. But someone else was there as well, a tiny boy with red hair and wide, tearless eyes. He hung limp against the poisoner, but whimpered when the man pressed his wand against his throat. Harry couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe. None of their research had said anything about a hostage.

"I know who you are," the poisoner said, eyes fastened on the rock despite their concealing spells. "Harry Potter. He never harmed a person when he could avoid it, they said." He gave an eerie, hollow laugh. "Come out where I can see you and lay your wand down."

Harry tried to trade an anguished look with Malfoy, only to see him looking calm and unaffected. He met Harry's eyes and nodded. "Do what he says," he mouthed. "Trust me."

Harry shivered, and for a long moment his trust hung there in the balance, as he wondered whether or not he should actually _obey _Malfoy. Why? If Malfoy didn't care about the hostage, as it seemed he didn't, would he actually save the boy, or consider his death an acceptable price as long as they caught the poisoner?

But Malfoy didn't flinch or scowl. He knelt there, as impassive as if he were waiting for Harry to trust him to Stun a prisoner.

Harry stepped into sight and laid his wand down.

The poisoner gave a nervous giggle. "Excellent." With a flick of his hand, he Summoned Harry's wand. Harry clenched his hands into fists. He hated the smart ones. "Now, Kevin here and I are going to take a little walk. You'll stay right where you are and not attempt to trace us. Do you understand? I'll kill him the moment I see any Auror coming after me."

It took everything in Harry not to glance towards the place where Malfoy knelt and betray the plan. He settled for nodding tightly.

"Good." The poisoner swayed on his feet, then recovered his balance. Harry, about to spring forwards, rocked back on his heels again. "You won't follow us," the poisoner repeated, his voice beginning to slur.

"Of course not," Harry said, and hoped that he sounded righteous and indignant enough. By now he had a glimmer of what Draco was doing, and it was brilliant.

"Right," the poisoner said, and wavered back and forth, blinking. Then he slipped to the ground with a little sigh.

Harry immediately raced forwards and snatched the boy from his arms. Kevin clung to him, whimpering, while Harry stroked his hair soothingly and then bent down and grabbed his wand.

"How did you cast the sleep charm without him noticing you?" he asked Malfoy, who was sauntering up with one of the collection bags they used to pick up evidence. He paused along the way to bind and gag the poisoner, and then Summoned his wand in turn and tucked it into his pocket.

"You were distracting him," Malfoy said, baring his teeth a little. "You do that often, as I notice." Harry just chose to nod and cuddle the boy closer, not responding verbally. "He wasn't warding his mind to Legilimency. I managed to get a hook in place—" a hook, as far as Harry understood it, was a small hold on a victim's mind "—and then sneak the sleep charm in under his awareness. It was like a powerful suggestion from his own mind."

"Thank you," Harry said. He whispered it, but he knew Malfoy would hear.

Malfoy paused with one hand above an iron cauldron. "You don't think it's too Dark?" he asked, without turning to face Harry.

"You're something deeper and more powerful than Dark," Harry said. "I know you use Legilimency in the service of—" He fumbled for a moment. He didn't want to say "good," because Malfoy would mock him, and he didn't think Malfoy's confession that he had become an Auror for the good of his family made his motives purely selfless. Nor had Malfoy only done this for the boy, since he hadn't known about him until a few minutes ago. "The Ministry," he said at last.

Malfoy bent down and placed a Stasis Charm on the cauldron, then shrank it and put it in the collection bag. "There's another thing I serve," he said.

"What?" Harry asked, joggling the boy a little as he started to cry.

"This partnership," Malfoy said.

Harry was glad that he didn't look up as he spoke, but simply continued his collection. He didn't want to explain to Malfoy why he was going a little weak-kneed and staring openly at his back.

* * *

"You don't really believe that."

There was something about the tone of Malfoy's voice that made Harry put the report he was writing aside and look at him. Malfoy leaned back in his chair behind his desk, which stood opposite Harry's. He would never go so far as to put his feet on the desk, Harry knew, which he had Transfigured to be mahogany and considerably cleaner than the standard-issue desk the Ministry had given him. But his legs were crossed and his hands resting in his lap, signals of relaxation for him. He stared, with an eyebrow raised.

"Don't really believe what?" Harry tried to remember what they'd been talking about. Some variation of the Gryffindor-Slytherin argument. He hadn't had his mind on it, but on the report about the Dinsmore case, which was already a week overdue.

"You don't really believe that having a child in Slytherin would be the end of the world," Malfoy said. "Even though you just recited that, and all the reasons why."

Harry blinked. He reckoned he didn't, but that wasn't the point. He took one side of the argument and Malfoy took the other. That was the way it always was. Harry hadn't thought either one of them _believed _it anymore. It was one of the loads of bollocks they used to pass the time.

But he would sound stupid if he said that—he couldn't keep up with the quick way Hermione phrased things, or the light, gentle way Ginny did. "How can you tell?" he asked instead.

"By your tone of voice," Malfoy murmured. "You always sound distant when you don't believe something."

Harry eyed him. Malfoy was leaning forwards, one hand on the desk now. He looked as though he was on the point of standing up from the chair, in fact. And that alarmed Harry, because it meant the conversation was about to get serious. He'd been good at avoiding rows with Malfoy so far. He wanted that to continue.

Then Harry realized what he was thinking, and frowned. _Idiot. This is the perfect way to make Malfoy stop respecting you and ask for a different partner, and you're letting it go to waste._

"Well, actually," Harry said, "I would rather that my children be in Gryffindor than Slytherin. It would mean less teasing for them and less bad perceptions of them in the future. I wouldn't stop loving them if they were Slytherins, but that's different." He paused, because Malfoy hadn't responded, and then added, "Not to mention all the bad habits, like lying, they'd pick up in Slytherin."

Malfoy didn't exclaim, or roll his eyes, or freeze his face into the mask of disgust that Harry had seen there whenever he had to speak to Ron or Ginny. He gave a faint, very cool smile, the kind Harry had learned to look forwards to seeing at the end of a case. "You don't believe _that, _either," he said. "Learning to read you is very useful, Potter."

There was a long, moronic moment when Harry sat there gaping and found himself drawn into Malfoy's eyes. Grey, yes, and cold, yes; that was what Ginny always complained about when she saw him. But they were more than that. They had a clarity at the bottom of them that—

_You never think about Ginny's eyes that way._

Horrified, Harry stood up and turned his back on Malfoy. He cleared his throat several times and then said, "All right, so I don't, really. Two of the bravest people I ever knew were Slytherins, and one could have passed for one."

There was a long silence. Harry thought Malfoy would let him get back to the report, and started to sit down again.

"Their names." Malfoy sounded almost dreamy, almost content, as though he was making a request for Harry to pass the salt, or open a door, or something else that didn't really matter.

"Snape." Harry tried to make his voice sarcastic, tried to imply that Malfoy _of course _should have known that, because too late, he had seen what Malfoy had trapped him into. "And Dumbledore's the one who could have passed for Slytherin, with all his plots and plans."

"The third name," Malfoy whispered.

And suddenly everything was tense and important.

Harry swallowed and decided that he would turn around and look Malfoy in the eye. He deserved no less. Anyway, he had to show that this _wasn't _important to him, no matter what it looked like, and hope that Malfoy couldn't read depth of truth in Harry's voice the way he could read lies.

He turned. Malfoy stood with both hands on the desk now, his body bent into an arch with Harry as its focal point.

His gaze took Harry's breath away.

"You, of course." Harry tried to snort. Tried to smile. Tried to sound as though nothing was so tiresome as having to admit that Malfoy was brave. It didn't work, and so, desperate, he dropped all the tricks and went straight for the plain truth, hoping to make Malfoy uncomfortable.

"After all I did," Malfoy asked, "you don't think I'm a coward?"

_How did it come to this, that Draco Malfoy is asking _me _for reassurance? _But the thought skittered across Harry's mind and dropped off again like a bug on the surface of water. Things were the way he were, and it was hardly surprising that Malfoy would end up asking him, when they were—

Going towards something. It was the first time Harry had acknowledged it to himself. He didn't know what the destination was. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. But it was there.

"Are you kidding?" Harry's voice was shaky. He would have liked to look aside, but Malfoy's wide, appealing gaze wouldn't let him. "Of course you are. You did the best you could for your parents in sixth year. You stood up for me when I was brought to your house in that stupid disguise, even though you knew Voldemort would punish you if he found out you lied. You came into the Room of Requirement to hunt me down—"

"That wasn't brave," Malfoy interrupted. "I was terrified of the Dark Lord."

"But you were afraid of me," Harry said simply. "And afraid for your parents, again. Instead of cowering somewhere, though, like so many people did in the battle, you tried to do something about it." It was a little easier to stand there and return Malfoy's glance, now. "And you still wanted to take me alive instead of killing me. I'd argue that shows a _little _ambivalence on your part."

Malfoy bowed his head. Harry admired the way his pale hair shaded his face, and waited for him to speak.

"Thank you," Malfoy said. He raised his head partway, every movement grinding as if his neck was a creaking clock, and then stared past Harry. "Even then, I think I cared about what you thought of me. And I didn't want you to die."

There was silence. There was stillness. Harry knew he could end it by turning back to his desk.

Harry reached across the distance and touched Malfoy on the shoulder.

Malfoy looked up with a flash in his eyes like fire. Harry avoided him in turn, sitting down and going back to work on the report.

But maybe he had learned something about Malfoy, in turn. From then on, he found out, he could tell when Malfoy was looking at him.

* * *

"Down!"

Harry dived. He heard the whoosh of a spell pass over him, and then the sound of stone cracking as it hit the floor behind him.

He didn't know what it had been, and he didn't need to, although from the smell of electricity in his nostrils, he thought he could guess. He was already on his feet and shoving his way forwards against the offensive spells that hung in the air like a black haze, in search of Malfoy, who he could hear but not see.

It was one of those situations that ought to have been utterly routine and had turned out not to be. He and Malfoy had narrowed the investigation into an organized ring of wizards using the Imperius Curse on Muggles down to several suspects, and had gone to visit the first one at his home. Reports from friends and neighbors had said that he was calm and would be glad to speak with Aurors (none of them believed that he had done anything so horrible, of course).

Instead, he had met them with a spell that clipped Malfoy's ear and then dashed into the depths of his house. They had followed, of course, only to find that he had trigged wards of some kind that filled the house with murk and made it hard to hear or smell anything more than a few feet away.

Malfoy was always accusing Harry of wanting to be a hero and live up to the hero stereotype, but _he _was the one who had run after Sover, the suspect, like a madman, without waiting for backup. Harry was going to remind him of that later.

Assuming there was a later.

Harry swore under his breath and pushed cautiously on. He had already slammed his shins on concealed chairs and tables, and he had cast a variation on a Bubble-Head Charm around himself to filter the air, because he didn't know what breathing too much of it might do to him. It didn't encircle his head as tightly as a normal one, though, because he wanted to be able to hear.

It had gone entirely silent now. Harry hated that. He ought to be able to hear Sower escaping if he was, or sounds of a duel if Malfoy hadn't been incapacitated.

Then he broke through a barrier that fizzed and snarled in his ears, and the reason for the lack of sound became obvious. Sower had had yet another ward up, and beyond it, in a large room that probably served as a drawing room ordinarily, was the battle.

Malfoy spun and leaped, closing in steadily on Sower, who was hiding behind a barrier of chairs and firing around the edge. He had already used spells that left the carpet scorched and stinking around Malfoy's feet, Harry saw. He used the Rearrangement Curse as Harry watched, which, contrary to its innocent name, would switch around the position of internal organs until it was unlikely that the person it hit would survive.

Harry yelped a warning, and Malfoy clasped his arms to his sides and dove straight down, so as to expose the smallest part of his body to the magic. At the same moment, Sower cast the Rearrangement Curse _again._

This time at Malfoy, lying on the floor.

Harry raised a Flexible Shield without thinking. It was a spell he had never been any good at, because it was more difficult than a Shield Charm while using almost the same gesture, but it was the one that he needed in this situation, where the Rearrangement Curse was too powerful for a simple _Protego._

He needed it, and the magic came in his need, creating what looked like a silvery mesh in front of Malfoy, hovering at hip height. The Rearrangement Curse struck it, and the Flexible Shield wrapped around it and absorbed its force. The shield was gone in the next moment, but so was the curse.

By then, Malfoy had cast from the ground and caught Sower as he leaned around his barrier, his mouth open in a soundless shriek. He flipped over twice and landed against the wall, caught up in ropes that looked subtly different from the ones that _Incarcerous _usually created.

Harry wasn't going to trouble himself about that. He threw a Stunner at Sower and crouched next to Malfoy, who was rising to his knees, moving with a wince and a grimace.

"Malfoy?" Harry whispered. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Malfoy said, giving Harry an odd look that he couldn't interpret. "He broke a bone in my foot. That's all." He examined the bound and unconscious Sower, then nodded and Summoned his wand. "Nasty little git."

"That's _all_?" Harry discovered his hands were shaking. He would have liked to try healing Malfoy himself, but he was still pants at complex healing magic. That was what St. Mungo's was for. "How in the world were you _walking?" _He gathered Malfoy up in his arms and surged to his feet with him. Malfoy gasped, face going white, and Harry snarled at him and immobilized his foot. "Idiot."

"I wanted to stop him." Malfoy gave Harry that odd look again. "How did you stop that second curse?"

"Flexible Shield," Harry said shortly, more interested in returning to the notion of how Malfoy was an idiot. "Do you realize you dashed off just like you're always telling _me _not to do?"

"But you can't cast those." Malfoy steadied himself with a hand on Harry's shoulder, seeming more shocked about the revelation than he was in pain from his injury.

"I managed this time," Harry said. "It was the Rearrangement Curse, and you were on the ground. You couldn't get out of the way in time. I knew the Shield Charm wouldn't do it. I did what I needed to do."

"Why did you need to so badly?" Malfoy leaned against him and gave a little hop. Harry snorted and conjured a stretcher for him, but jerked Sower into the air unpityingly with _Mobilicorpus_. He could suffer whatever wounds he took from this, the—

There was no word in Harry's vocabulary bad enough for someone who would aim two Rearrangement Curses at his partner, so he just let the thought trail away, unfinished.

"Because you were in danger," he said. "Why else?"

Malfoy's eyes widened once, and he looked away. Harry waited, then asked, "Are you telling me that you would do less if I was in danger like that?" He didn't know what he would do if the answer to his question was yes, but he did think that he needed to hear, no matter what.

"It's not that," Malfoy said. "Of course I would." Harry felt tension relax in him like an uncoiling spring. "But I don't regularly surpass my physical and magical limits to save you. Instead, you keep saving _me_."

There was a resentment there that Harry knew could turn to bitterness if left untouched. He said, lightly—because too much care would also offend Draco—"Well, you're the one who consistently comes up with clever solutions to our difficulties. I couldn't have managed against the poisoner without you. And you kept Sower pinned until I could arrive. You're going to end up saving my life soon. It's the luck of the draw that it's happened the other way so far."

"I owe you so many life-debts," Draco muttered, lying down on the stretcher Harry had conjured for him without any reluctance. He never showed any where his own comfort and life were concerned. Harry was grateful for that.

"And I owe you one for 'failing' to recognize me at Malfoy Manor, and I owe your mother one for lying to Voldemort about me," Harry said. "I don't brood on them."

Draco swallowed once, then asked, "Could you please not use that name around me? I know you don't mean to, but it sounds—it sounds like you're mocking the fear I still feel."

Harry blinked, hardly able to grasp what kind of gift Draco was offering him with this double vulnerability—talking about the fear in the first place, and then asking him for something—but he said, "Of course."

Draco caught his wrist in a bruising grip and squeezed down, once, then pulled his hand back and closed his eyes as he settled against the pillow the stretcher spell automatically provided.

Weeks later, Harry was still trying to understand that gift, and why it had been so easy to transition to calling Malfoy by his first name, even before he gave it.

* * *

Harry wished he hadn't come to this party.

Ginny had said it would be fun, and for her, it was; she was chattering easily with her partner, Anna Lebeck, whom she had taken to after all. Harry was glad they had become friends. She still asked when he would manage to switch out of his partnership with Draco and join her, but her questions were less persistent and frequent now.

Ron was there, with his partner Greyborn, and Hermione was there (largely to make sure that Ron went home on time and didn't drink too much, Harry suspected). There were plenty of other former trainees, too. This wasn't a Ministry function so much as an informal party suggested and hosted by new Aurors, which happened to be using the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as its place.

There were tables everywhere loaded with food, games of darts and wrestling and mock duels, dances up and down the narrow aisles between cubicles and the corridors between office doors, and plenty to drink. Harry wouldn't have had trouble finding something to do if he wanted it.

Instead, he stood against the wall and watched Draco.

Draco was talking softly to a young woman named Astoria Greengrass, who Harry thought had come as a guest of one of the other trainees. All he _really _knew was that she hadn't been through the training program.

Oh, and that she was beautiful, with long blonde hair and shimmering ivory skin of the kind that Harry knew he never would have achieved even if he had lived as pampered a life as Draco apparently had.

He knew that.

Harry turned away with his butterbeer—he didn't think it would be a good idea to get too drunk tonight—and his grudge. It wasn't worthy, what passed through him like a shudder when he looked at Draco. It was too near jealousy, so near that Harry couldn't give it a different name in all honesty, and he should feel jealous over Ginny and the people she chose to speak to, not Draco. Several handsome men clustered around Ginny, after all, including Ron's partner, who watched her with big calf eyes.

_Think about your wife, _Harry thought, tilting the butterbeer back and drizzling a long, warm stream down his throat. _There's no reason to think about Draco that way. Or anyone except Ginny._

There definitely wasn't. His breathing got short when he thought about Draco kissing Greengrass, and he had to wipe off sweat, and he felt as if he were choking on oil. Those were all the signs of passionate jealousy he had read about.

Except that he didn't _get _jealous of people like that. He knew that he didn't. He was incapable of feeling passion.

He took another swallow of butterbeer and hunched back against the wall. He fastened his gaze on Ron, who was laughing at something Hermione had said, and thought about making his way over to join them.

But then he wouldn't be able to see Draco as well, wouldn't be able to notice if he slipped off somewhere with Greengrass.

_That's all the more reason to do it, _he argued with himself, and walked over to his friends.

Their conversation rolled over him, meaningless, irrelevant. Harry stood there, smiled when he was required to and laughed when he thought it was appropriate, and felt as though he had a fishhook in his heart.

It made no _sense_. Why would he be feeling this now, for Draco of all people? He had tried thinking about blokes before, fantasizing about them, even dating them in a Polyjuice disguise. He knew he wasn't bent.

_Any more than you're straight._

Harry checked over his shoulder again, and found that Draco and Greengrass were both gone.

Everyone said it was a strange accident, later, the way that Ron's Firewhisky glass had splintered apart in his hand just as he was taking a drink, sending burning liquid and hot, sharp glass everywhere. Harry scrambled to clean up with the rest, but didn't apologize, because then Hermione and Ron would want to know what could have caused him enough anger to lash out with directionless wandless magic.

He wasn't ready to explain.

He wasn't ready to acknowledge, even to himself, what had happened, keeping it locked in his heart like a hot stone, until after he had gone home with Ginny and made mild, passionless love to her. Ginny fell asleep with a happy smile on her face, and Harry rolled away from her.

He was hard again already, thinking about Draco's courage, his intense stares and fleeting touches, the standoffish way he had of somehow making himself essential to Harry's life.

He wanked, for the first time rubbing himself raw, and for the first time came with a cry that would have shattered the stillness except that he kept it back with his wrist across his mouth—that was one of the things Ginny complained about, that he made so little sound during sex—and a tightness, flooding out in hot, sticky relief, in his belly that showed him why so many people thought orgasm was _wonderful._

Then he lay awake and, staring at the ceiling, unwrapped the hot stone: he was in love with Draco Malfoy.

_But it's all right, _he assured himself swiftly, while his lips tingled with shame and his hands with numbness and his eyes with tears. _It's really all right, because nothing can happen. I have Ginny, and it looks like he'll have someone else, and we both know that we're not that to each other. We're partners. He's straight. He'll never look at me twice. He has no reason to do so, because even if it turns out that I can fall in love with people after all—if it's love and not just a stupid infatuation, which it probably is—I can't _act _on it. I can't betray Ginny like that._

_And he'll never find out. I'll make sure of that._

He hated himself through most of the night, but come morning, he had made his peace with the fact. Being in love with Draco was all right, because nothing would ever happen between them because of it and no one would ever know.

Ginny's words came back to him, the ones he had overheard in the kitchen with Hermione, saying that some people just fell in love once and no more.

Harry suspected he was one of those people, and that's why he hadn't felt any passion so far.

He just wished he had fallen in love with his wife.

* * *

That was the second step.


	3. The Third Step

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—The Third Step_

"Potter? Are you all right?"

There were a lot of questions like that in the next few days, after the party and after Harry's revelation, as he and Draco started working a complex case that would probably turn out to involve members of the Ministry who had taken bribes to conceal the existence of potions labs with human subjects.

"Harry? Are you all right?"

There were lots of questions like that in the next few days, from Ginny at home, who seemed to have noticed that something was wrong and spent time frowning at him with her head on one side. Harry knew that look. She used the same look on the crosswords in the _Daily Prophet_, and more often than not she figured them out.

He would have liked to fall down a deep pit and collapse the tunnel behind him. Or at least tell them to back off and have them accept that he didn't want to talk right now.

But that would be some ideal existence, Harry thought bitterly, some existence where he had been braver and better and hadn't married Ginny or lied to her. Instead, he had to live in the world the way it was, where he had made his own bed and would lie in it.

He wanted to hit himself in the head with a sleeping spell when he realized the pun he'd inadvertently made with that thought.

But Harry got through it somehow. He told Ginny about some of the cases he and Draco had worked, and confessed that he was having trouble sleeping. True, if not for the reasons that she thought it was.

He had begun lying. _Begin as you mean to go on._

Ginny wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek and murmured into his ear. At her insistence, he drank some Dreamless Sleep Potion and spent nights without either the nightmares he did sometimes have or the wistful visions of what he could have had with Draco.

_If Draco wasn't straight. If I wasn't married. If Ginny's happiness didn't have to be my first consideration, before everything else._

It was harder with Draco, because Harry knew how well Ginny knew him, but Draco had unexpected depths of insight, and sometimes peered at Harry with narrowed, intense eyes as if he could intimidate Harry into confessing all his secrets. But he had to have an explanation, and Harry was finally able to give him one.

"I think I'm getting distracted from my cases," he admitted quietly. "There's a private thing I suddenly realized, something that makes me out to be a lot less noble in my own eyes than I had always assumed I was. I had to deal with that, and with the fact that there's nothing I can really do to change it."

Draco gave him a sharp stare, and then tilted his head haughtily and looked away. "See that the distraction doesn't end up costing us our lives, Potter," he ordered.

Harry gave him an apologetic smile and did work harder after that, staying late to file reports and wrap up the business ends of cases until Ginny started to complain that he was never spending an evening at home. And then he started coming home and concentrating on Ginny: buying gifts for her, taking her out to restaurants where it required his scar to get them a table, defending her in a row against her brothers.

"Not that I'm not grateful, Harry," she said as they were leaving the Burrow, and she was leaning against his arm, her head on his shoulder. "But what is this about? You never did this before. You were a _good _husband," she added quickly. "But this is new."

Harry looked down at her and put a lock of her hair behind her ear. This would be so much easier, in some ways, if he was able to think she was stupid, or a substandard Auror, the way Draco had said she was their first day together. Or if she had turned out to be cheating or clingy or jealous. It would be a relief to tell himself that her character flaws were so great it was no wonder he had fallen in love with someone else.

But that wasn't true. Yes, she was dependent on him, but Harry had encouraged that himself, thinking Ginny would be happier if she had someone she could always lean on. It wasn't her fault. She had done nothing wrong.

"I realized recently that you're really the most important thing in my life," he told her soberly. _That's true. It has to be true, no matter how much I wish things were different. _"I think it's finally starting to sink in, what being married really means."

Ginny usually had wide, bright smiles. He had never seen the one she gave him now, small and grave, or felt the way her hand trembled on his arm. "I'm glad," was all she said. "It's a big commitment."

"Yes, it is," Harry said, unable to think of anything smarter.

"And everyone deserves someone who puts them first," Ginny went on. Her hand clutched down possessively on his arm, saying without words who was in that position for her.

Harry kissed her ear, and flung out a desperate hope into the spring darkness, hoping that someone, or something, would hear it and treat it as a prayer to answer.

_I can do that. I've lied to her about so many things, and I married her under false pretenses, but no matter how much I wish I was with Draco instead, I can still put her first. One is a thought, the other is an action. _

_And I've always been good at actions._

* * *

"What's happened? You've become distant lately."

Harry leaned back against his desk and tried to look amused rather than folding his arms and glaring. He thought _he _was the one with the right to complain, since Draco spent half their cases now grumbling because he wanted to hurry back to Astoria. But Draco was the one who sounded like a jealous lover.

_That doesn't do any good, _he told himself, both about the thought and the images that filled his mind with the thought, and tried to respond calmly. "I realized that I was neglecting Ginny. I've tried to give her more of my time and attention lately. That's all."

Draco stared at him, mouth open. Harry frowned. Was the answer really that unbelievable? Maybe Draco thought he had never cared about Ginny at all, given that they didn't talk about her much.

That was one of the things he was trying to make up for, though.

"Why? She's a substandard Auror." Draco tapped his fingers one by one, slowly, on the desk, looking at Harry instead of past him the way he would if he was really angry. Harry tried not to admire the shape of his mouth. He should think about how well he knew Draco instead, and how that could be an advantage for them when they worked on difficult cases together.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Harry asked. "I'm talking about her as my wife, not my partner."

Draco worked his mouth into a sneer, but Harry didn't think his heart was in it. _What's wrong with him lately? _"It's nice to see that you've given up that fantasy you approached me with on our first day. It never would have worked out."

"No, I don't think it would have," Harry said mildly. He was trying hard not to be bitter towards either Draco or Ginny. Yes, he was only human, so it would happen _sometimes, _but it wasn't as though either of them knew they were tormenting him with their reactions. "Besides, Ginny is happy with her partner now."

Draco turned and stirred the papers on his desk moodily with one hand. Harry tore his eyes away from the length of Draco's fingers and reminded himself that he couldn't wank at work anyway, even if he wasn't married.

"I don't see why treating your wife better means that you have to treat _me _poorly." Draco sounded sullen and sulky, a small child.

Harry smiled, because he couldn't help it, but hid the smile before Draco glanced over at him. He didn't think Draco would find it amusing. "You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. What are the ways I've treated you badly?"

"Distant on cases," Draco said. "Acting as though you can't wait to get out of here in the evenings and go back to your _wife. _Remember that we're Aurors and here for another reason than just to make a living, Potter."

"It's no worse than the grumbling you do about wanting to go on dates with Astoria," Harry snapped. He glared, realized what he was doing, and looked down at the file in front of him. He couldn't apologize yet, especially when Draco was being so hypocritical.

Silence, to the point that Harry hoped Draco would let it fade away like most of their arguments tended to these days. But instead, he murmured in a subdued voice, "Have I been that bad?"

"Yes," Harry said. _Just continue. You have to, now that he knows you resent her. _"I don't mind sometimes, but God, does it have to be every evening? And if my going home to Ginny bothers you, then just consider that at least I was married before we were assigned to each other, while you dating Astoria is a new thing. I think I'm justified in worrying about how it might change our partnership."

More silence. Harry finally turned around again. Draco had sat down behind his desk and was staring at the piles of unfiled reports and scribbled memos as though they held the reason for his behavior.

He had something of the cool mask on his face when he looked up again, though more fragile than usual. "I think it would be a good idea if we didn't pry into each other's personal lives again," he said. "Agreed?"

Harry nodded sharply. There was a twist and a snap in his chest, as though someone had broken an elastic band there, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except balancing his marriage with Ginny and his partnership with Draco, and not losing either one—he couldn't bear to hurt Ginny, and he couldn't bear to give up Draco—because he was stupid.

Draco went home early that day. Well, he could, because they had finished a case last night and hadn't been assigned a new one. Harry sat there, looking at Draco's desk, and imagining him with his arm around Astoria's waist, laughing into her hair as they waited to be seated in some exclusive restaurant.

Then he thought about Ginny wounded, possibly dying, on her job. She was an Auror, too, and she wasn't always home when Harry arrived. Thinking and dreaming about Draco kept him from remembering that sometimes.

The image of Draco happily married to Astoria was still worse than the image of Ginny's death, which made Harry sick.

In the end, he rose and waved his wand to dim the fire burning in their office hearth. There was no reason to stay here. If he was going to wait by himself for someone important in his life to come back, he could at least do so at home.

Ginny arrived an hour after he did, flushed with excitement over a new case and chattering about it. Harry felt the elastic band snap in his chest again when he looked at her. No one needed to tell him why.

* * *

As time passed, it got easier to bear, if no easier to watch.

Draco did date Astoria, but he talked less about it, and complained less about Harry talking about Ginny. In return, Harry tried to make sure that he didn't do that too often, and that he stayed late to finish up reports when it was his turn and Draco had done it the night or the week before.

And time did its work, blunting the first revelation of his feelings. Harry began, cautiously, to relax. He could look Draco in the face without consciously admiring the shape of his jaw or his smile. He could laugh with him over jokes and not long to hear that laugh in other contexts. He could begin to accept that Draco would marry someone else.

That last part still hurt like fire, mind you. But it was better than it hurting like boiling oil, which it used to.

Harry thought he understood everything now, and that he'd been foolish and a liar, but was properly punished for it. And then came the morning when Draco rushed into the office with his mouth set in a tight snarl, his hands clenched, his shoulders hunched as if to ward off a blow.

Harry knew how to deal with moods like this by now, even though he didn't always know what had caused them. He murmured soothingly and charmed the cup of tea waiting for Draco warmer. Draco always liked it scalding, as if he needed the pain in his mouth to distract himself from whatever had angered him.

This morning, Draco tasted the tea and slammed the cup immediately back down, cracking the side. Tea rushed out across his desk. Harry said something wordless and snatched the reports lying there out of the way of the liquid. They'd have to do at least another week's worth of work if the tea smudged them.

"Nice to see that you're more concerned about the reports than about me."

Harry shivered as Draco's low, charged voice struck his ears. It sounded like the audible equivalent of lightning, and he could imagine other circumstances under which Draco would speak like that, so clearly that he nearly didn't mind if Draco was angry with him now.

"Good morning to you, too," he said, and laid the reports on his own desk, on top of another teetering pile that would protect them if Draco decided to try the same stunt again. "Did Your Majesty discover a tear in his silken sheets today?"

Draco's hands seized and spun him around. Harry went with the motion, knowing he could break free at any time he wanted. Draco was taller than he was, sure, but Harry was stronger. He ended up against the wall, and Draco leaned in and breathed hot fumes into his face. Harry wouldn't be surprised to find out they stank of brimstone. Draco pressed his belly against Harry's and glared into his eyes from less than an inch away.

No, Harry didn't object to this position _at all_.

Neither did his body, and Harry had to do something to distract Draco's attention from that before something unfortunate happened. So he interrupted the poisonous little speech Draco sounded like he was about to make, if his indrawn breath was any indication, and snapped, "I didn't make the tea too hot on purpose. That's how you always like it when you're angry. Now, are you going to forgive me and discuss what got you huffing, or are we going to shove each other around like schoolboys?"

Draco paused, and then exhaled hard and let Harry go. Harry stood back up and straightened his robes around the shoulders, but kept a wary eye on Draco. He hadn't expected that tactic to work; he had only wanted Draco to concentrate on his words and not anything hard he might feel against his stomach.

Draco turned his back and stalked to his desk, rattling his way so fiercely through the parchments there that Harry became afraid he would go to work in another office for the day. He didn't want that. Work was his one chance to see Draco.

But he kept quiet, because he didn't understand what was going on, and he would probably make things worse instead of better if he interfered.

Draco gathered his piles into shape and straightened the edges of the papers until they were perfectly aligned, then turned around again so fast half the piles immediately became disordered again. "I broke up with Astoria last night," he said.

Harry blinked. "I'm sorry," he said blankly. He was, or he must have sounded enough like it to fool Draco's ability to tell when he was lying, because Draco gave him one sharp look and then nodded acceptance. "What happened?"

"She wanted me to set a date for our wedding." Draco ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture that made Harry gape, because he'd never seen Draco do something so unsophisticated. Draco looked around and laughed at him. "Was there a particular reason that you wanted to show me your tonsils this morning?"

_Reasons to show you them aren't few and far between in my imagination, _Harry would have replied once, but he feared it would sound suggestive now, and he just wasn't good enough at lying to hold a determined Draco at bay. He shook his head. "Sorry. Go on."

"I don't know why," Draco said. "That's what I'd been working towards. She's the kind of wife I'd like to have. Beautiful, pure-blood, generous with her affection. I didn't want a marriage like my parents have," he added, as if Harry had asked. "Devoid of physical affection, because they're just as hard with each other as they are with the world. They love each other, I know that, but they act as if there's an invisible audience judging them on every _show _of it. I wanted someone poised, but also someone artless."

"Probably impossible to find both in one person," Harry said wryly, and told his stupid hopes to die one last death. "Poised" was the last word that anyone would use to describe him.

"Perhaps," Draco said, with a shrug. "But when she asked me about the date, I suddenly realized that I'd pictured our wedding happening years in the future, when I was promoted and Astoria was older. She's two years younger than I am, and apparently she wants to leave her parents' home. But I don't think that's a good enough reason to get married." He spun on one heel and stared at Harry again. "You probably think it is."

"You mean I probably expect you to think it is," Harry corrected mildly, but with a warning look. "I don't. Now that I know you, I don't."

Draco lowered his head and nodded slowly. "But my parents will think I should have taken what I could get," he said, "that I don't have many chances with our new reputation. They don't even think I should have become an Auror, that it was tempting fate in some way." He looked up, his eyes solid in a way Harry hadn't often seen them become before. "I refuse to give up. I have a different dream, but I'm still going to achieve it."

"You have my support," Harry said, "for what that matters. If Astoria couldn't give you what you wanted, if you want to marry for love, then you should."

Draco curled his lip. "Trust you to phrase my dream in a way that takes all the glow out of it," he muttered, but he slammed his shoulder into Harry's as he made his way out of the office to fetch another cup of tea.

Harry created many fantasies about that brush of shoulders, and even more about the moment when Draco had held him against the wall, in the days and weeks and months that followed. Draco's relationship with Astoria might have ended, but that didn't mean Harry's marriage had.

Or even would. Harry had vowed to be with Ginny for life, and he would have to.

* * *

"I feel like he's not listening to me anymore, like there's something else taking precedence."

Harry paused with his hand on his cloak. He had come into the house and shut the door behind him but hadn't called for Ginny yet, enjoying a moment of privacy before he had to see her. Thus he heard her voice clearly from the small room that she used as a study. She was leaning French, or maybe Spanish by now. She seemed to become interested in things rapidly and dropped them as rapidly.

"What else could be taking precedence except his job?" Hermione's voice asked sensibly. "Have you talked to him?" Harry heard a small clinking noise that made him blink. Was Hermione _baking? _That sure sounded like a wooden spoon knocking against a bowl.

"It's so impossible to talk to him about this," Ginny sighed. Harry, standing there with his hand still on his cloak and his head soft with guilt for listening in, could picture her sagging back on her heels and pushing her hair out of her face. "What am I supposed to say? That I think he's talking to me less than he did a month ago? That he stares off into space with this dark, brooding look on his face? All I do is _feel _like that. I don't _know_."

Harry sighed. It seemed that his best try at putting Ginny first hadn't worked, or else he had started to slip up without realizing it. Had he been thinking about Draco too much?

"It would still do you good to talk to him," said Hermione, in the tone that Harry recognized from her "do your homework now" speeches at Hogwarts. "Explain that you feel like he's distant even if he really isn't. That will at least force him to pay attention and think about what he can do to change things."

"No, it won't," Ginny said. "And anyway, that's my biggest fear, that he'll try, and it won't change anything."

Harry winced and stepped back, hanging his cloak up and opening, then shutting, the door as if he'd just arrived. By the time he turned around again, Ginny was coming rapidly out of her study, her face a little flushed but otherwise normal. On other nights, Harry thought, he would probably have attributed that to crouching a little too close to the fire.

Maybe she'd done this several times, talked to Hermione or other people about him, and he hadn't noticed. Was there anything he could do without admitting that he'd overheard?

_Although maybe I should say I did. At least that would give us something real to fight about._

"How was your day?" he murmured into her hair as he pushed back the cloak she still had on, tangling his fingers around her ears. Ginny ducked her head and kept it there as he hung her cloak next to his own. Harry saw her twisting her hands over and over together out of the corner of his eye.

"Fine," Ginny said. "The case we worked today was boring. A thief, taking two bottles of wine, and oh, they thought he used Dark magic to do it, but it turned out he didn't." She rolled her eyes and looked up with a bright smile at Harry. "What about yours?"

"Normal," Harry said, which was the truth. He had worked with Draco, fantasized about Draco, eaten lunch with Draco, worried because Draco's eyes were dark and haunted and he had the weak step and pale face of someone who wasn't getting enough sleep, and then got into a row with Draco when he tried to ask what was wrong. _It seems asking what's wrong with the people in my life is what's wrong. _He focused all his attention on Ginny, and asked, "What would you like to do for dinner this evening?"

Ginny blinked. "I thought we'd decided that we were going to Diagon Alley. There was a new restaurant that you wanted to try, wasn't there?"

Harry smiled. "Yeah, but I thought I'd ask _you_. Are you up to that? You do look tired." That was the kind of thing he could at least say to Ginny without causing offense, even if the other questions were useless.

A slow smile made its way across Ginny's lips. "I'm tired," she said. "How about we stay home and you cook toast and eggs for me?" Toast and eggs was one thing Harry was good at after making breakfast for the Dursleys.

Harry nodded eagerly, and so they did, with Ginny sitting at the table and imitating the accused thief's voice for him. Harry found himself laughing more easily than he ever did with Draco since his revelation, because he would wonder if he really thought the joke was funny or was just basking in the sound of Draco's laughter.

They ate together, and Ginny told him more about her day, and Harry mentioned some of his, and then she fell asleep in front of the fire, her mouth wide and spilling a bit of drool on the carpet. Harry watched her and wished their lives could be like this more often.

_Maybe they could be, if I made just a bit of effort._

* * *

"Potter. About time you showed up."

Harry took the file that Draco tossed to him with a little nod, deciding that he would just ignore Draco's bad mood. "What is this case?" he asked, because the file was thicker than the ones they usually tackled. He started to read, wincing when he saw that the top page carried a photograph of a corpse, a young man with his head sitting beside the body, the mouth stuffed full of what looked like fur. Blood spread around the shoulders and back in a large puddle. Whoever killed him had stabbed him, too, hard enough to barely leave any normal-looking cloth and skin beneath the red.

"That is a picture of Horatio Stegton," said Draco, folding his hands behind his head. Harry was an expert at watching him from the corner of his eye by now, and he could think about what those long fingers would do to him if they ever touched him. _Could_, but he wasn't going to, because he was loyal to his wife. "His family and friends claim that they don't know what happened to him. His body was found outside the junction of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley this morning."

"In a place where the magical signature of the killer would blend with a thousand others," Harry muttered, reading that on the page next to the photo.

Draco nodded. "Precisely. We have no witnesses, if you don't count the first people who found the body. We have no leads, other than the substance in his mouth, which isn't exactly common, and a few rumors about people who supposedly hated him with a passion. He was responsible for breaking up several relationships, it seems."

"What was the thing in his mouth?" Harry asked, but he saw the answer just then in an isolated line by itself, and read it aloud in the same instant as Draco spoke.

"Hippogriff feathers."

They stopped and grinned at each other. Harry could feel a spark catching in his chest and dancing in Draco's eyes at the same moment. It felt like old times—that is, a few months ago, before he had realized he loved Draco.

Draco surged to his feet and laid his hands on his desk. "Hippogriff feathers suggest several things. The Forbidden Forest. Experimental breeders. That Magical Zoo they started a few months ago on the outskirts of London. Potions brewers."

Harry frowned, running over the bare information that he remembered from his Potions courses in his head. "I thought hippogriff feathers weren't used for much. They…break apart easily in water or something? Something that makes them unsuitable for more than a few specialist applications, anyway."

"Exactly," Draco said. "But among their most common uses is as a base for love potions."

Harry whistled softly. "And that could be a good symbolic substance to put in the mouth of a man someone must suspect had used a love potion. There are people who can't accept that a relationship ends for natural and normal reasons."

Draco froze, why Harry didn't know, and gave him a glare so steady that Harry felt as if it would be burned on the back of his skull through his eyes. But then Draco shrugged a little and said, very softly, as if addressing someone else, "That's right. I think we need to look at his rivals and at people who might have felt scorned when he dropped them for someone else."

Harry nodded, trying to look as meek and harmless as he could. He didn't want to encounter another of those burning glares. "All right. But which should we do first? Go check on the hippogriff feathers or on his rivals?"

Draco put his head on the side. "Neither of those errands is actually dangerous, is it? And we would get more done if we split up and acted separately—"

"No!" Harry actually cringed at how sharp his voice was, at least the equivalent of Draco's glare, but he made no attempt to moderate it. "No," he said more quietly. "Regulations say that we stay together, and I know that you want to obey the rules."

Draco looked at him with a flat, neutral expression. "Right."

"Besides," Harry added, "as if I would let you dash into danger by yourself. You can get into trouble just walking down a corridor in the Ministry."

Draco gave him a softened look this time, along with a sweet smile, and nodded. "That's right," he said.

He was close behind Harry when they went out the door for some reason, hovering as if he thought there was already danger from this particular investigation. Harry shook his head in confusion. Draco was shifting from mood to mood, and he wasn't sure what would happen next.

The one thing he _was _sure of—how intriguing Draco's warmth was, so close to him—was something he didn't want, or need, to think about.

* * *

"I wish I could help yeh, Harry," Hagrid said, sounding regretful. He handed over another rock cake, and Harry carefully dipped it in his tea to soften it before he tried to take a bite. Fang, old and grey around the jaws now, thumped his tail hopefully on the floor and stared at the rock cake in case Harry was too stupid to take the hint. "But the baby hippogriffs are right in the middle of the Forest now, yeh see, and I haven't heard of any problems with the adults. So I don't think it's here."

Harry nodded, and glanced sideways to see how Draco was getting on. Draco was sitting with his legs hunched up until they almost touched his chest, glaring at every surface in the cottage where the dust, cobwebs, or sheer clutter of stone and wooden objects might creep up on him. He noticed Harry looking and fixed him with another burning stare.

Harry bit his lip and looked back at Hagrid. "Have you heard anything about hippogriffs elsewhere? If you could give us _any _help at all, that would really help—I mean, it would give us a clue." He could feel Draco's withering look for being so repetitive. He always received those, and over the last few months, he had done what he could to reduce them and sound more articulate.

Hagrid fidgeted in his seat, stared into his tea, and otherwise gave the poor performance he always did when he needed to lie and couldn't. "No," he said, completely unconvincingly. "I wouldn't know that, not at all!"

Draco started to say something. Harry made a little twisting motion with his wrist to warn him to shut up and smiled wistfully at Hagrid. "You're sure? It could be really important."

Beads of sweat started out on Hagrid's forehead. He looked at his tea, at Fang, and then at the walls, as if they would advise him. Even Draco was smart enough to sit quietly this time, and Harry went on trying to soften the rock cake enough that it wouldn't break his teeth.

"All right," Hagrid said hoarsely. He stood up and peered suspiciously out the windows before he shut them. Then he leaned close. Harry nodded encouragingly and glanced at Draco from the corner of his eye to make sure he would stay out of it. Once again, Draco was watching the threatened assault of the dust and appeared to notice nothing. Harry's heart swelled with pride. Draco was doing pretty well for being in a house with someone he feared and disliked.

"There's this new breeding program going on," Hagrid whispered. "In a warded compound in the Shetland Isles. But I didn't tell yeh."

"Of course not," Harry said. "And you couldn't tell us how to get there, either, could you? I'm sure it's knowledge not in your head."

That was too complex for poor Hagrid, who wrinkled his forehead and then stared at Harry as if he were speaking riddles. Harry sighed and gave in. "You could tell us the way there if you wanted," he said. "And in return, we wouldn't tell anyone else that you said it. Or anything at all," he added, looking at Draco. Draco grimaced, but nodded.

"Oh," said Hagrid, and gave them the Apparition coordinates.

* * *

They arrived on a mound of rock in the middle of a swift wind and swifter rain. Harry promptly drew his cloak around his face and cast spells that ought to warm them and shelter them from the weather. He shook his head wryly at Draco, who was fumbling for his hood with a look of shock. He didn't know if Draco hadn't ever heard about the Shetland Isles or just expected every place they were to conform to his will, which was that it be calm and sunny.

_I find even that lovable. Merlin, I do have it bad._

"Come on!" he shouted, leaning in so that his words would make it to Draco. "We can't be far from the edge of the sanctuary, and once we're inside the wards, it should be calmer. They couldn't rear hippogriffs in this weather."

Draco's reply, something about how people who were mad enough to come here in the first place were mad enough to do anything, vanished in the wind. Harry took his arm and led him forwards, stepping carefully from one lump of stone to the other. He knew the Shetlands were islands, but it seemed as though this one consisted of a large number of very small and separate rocks.

They crossed what had to be the border of the sanctuary, because suddenly the wind was gone and the cloak around Harry's face became uncomfortably warm. He dropped it and stared around in wonder. Draco, beside him, gaped until Harry made a little shutting motion towards his jaw. It was fine for _him _to be undignified, but he knew Draco would hate it if he looked that way.

The wizards who bred hippogriffs here had not only warmed the air and cast spells to hold the storms at bay, they had changed the ground. This looked far too reminiscent of the Forbidden Forest and the field where Hagrid's hut stood to be a coincidence. Harry headed towards the cluster of small buildings nearby, wondering if they would find someone he knew there.

Then he realized Draco was still standing in one place and staring, and turned around to see what had frozen him.

The most enormous—herd? flock? Harry thought about it for a minute and decided to call them a group—of hippogriffs was feeding on a mixed pile of what looked like meat and grass not far away. Their flanks gleamed roan, chestnut, grey, and sometimes black. Their wings trembled over their backs, tipped with white and sometimes with blood. One of them pinned a haunch of animal flesh to the ground with a talon as Harry watched and ripped gobbets free from it, pausing to shake its head each time, so that bits of its meal flew away to coat the grass.

Harry thought he knew what the problem might be. He touched Draco's arm. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked softly.

Draco stared at him, and then asked, "What in the world do you mean? Why would this be any harder for me than you?" His voice adopted the sneer that he used when he thought someone was insulting him but he couldn't see how.

"Because a hippogriff attacked you once," Harry said, frowning. How could Draco have forgotten that when the incident was clear in Harry's own mind, clearer than ever since he and Draco had become partners? "I just wondered if bad memories were coming back to you now that you saw them."

Draco ducked his head so that he and Harry were more eye to eye. "No," he whispered, but his voice had changed and the sneer had vanished. "No. But it's good that you remember it," he added, still looking at Harry.

Harry nodded, feeling the same intensity that had crackled between them that day in the office when Draco held him against the wall, and not understanding why it would be here. They weren't alone, and there was no way that they could touch each other in some indecent way without it being remarked.

_Not that that's the most important thing, _Harry thought scoldingly to himself. _The most important is, or should be, that you don't want to cheat on Ginny. _He tore his gaze away from Draco and saw a tall witch with long dark hair approaching them from the nearest hut. A pair of boarhounds walked at her side. They were so similar to Fang that Harry was immediately sure they were his puppies.

"Greetings, ma'am," Harry said, the safest mode of address until he figured out who she was. "We're here because we learned that—"

"_Draco_?" the woman interrupted him, staring at Draco.

"_Millicent_?" Draco said, in the same tone, and then he and the woman were standing closer together and embracing. The boarhounds moved their tails in slow, confused patterns, then sat down and stared at Harry, because they seemed convinced that he was the main threat here.

Confused, Harry looked at the woman and finally noticed the resemblance in her nose and jaw to the Millicent Bulstrode he had known at Hogwarts. She had grown, and she was no longer as brutish or as stupid-looking. Harry had never known that she was that interested in Care of Magical Creatures, though. She had dropped it in sixth year like everyone else.

And, Harry thought, Draco was embracing her for far too long. He felt the familiar bile-like taste of jealousy invading his throat again, and coughed, while staring obviously at the hippogriffs. The black one feeding on the deer haunch, or whatever it was, looked up at them and then returned to its kill, horse tail lashing once.

Draco and Bulstrode separated, with a final smile from her and a touch from him that Harry could have done without. Draco turned to Harry and touched Bulstrode's arm as he presented her, for all the world as if they were at a formal party. "Harry, permit me to introduce Millicent Bulstrode. She was in Slytherin—"

"I remember her," Harry said.

"And you bear me a grudge of some sort, it seems." Bulstrode pushed her hair back behind her shoulders and reached out to touch the collars of the boarhounds, never taking her eyes from him. "But I can remember doing nothing to you that would substantiate such a grudge."

Harry noticed the way Draco was staring at him, and got his temper under control. They were here to investigate a case. They were not here to scowl at each other or think about things they could never have.

_Or go on dates, _he thought, but that was unfair for the way Draco was touching Bulstrode. From the way he hugged her, their last meeting had been a friendly one, and Harry had seen how hard it was for Draco to make friends among the Aurors. Though it felt as if he were forcing a piece of iron to bend, he managed to smile.

"Sorry," he said. "I was on edge, assuming the owners of the herd would be hostile." He glanced at Draco, and found his eyes bright and curious. Harry looked back at Bulstrode, and cursed the sensitivity that made every brush of Draco's gaze tangible to him. "Hippogriff feathers are involved in a murder case. Would you mind showing us a list of all your customers for the last month?"

Bulstrode gave him an amused glance. "Yes, in fact, I would, Potter. You'll notice that I've taken some precautions here. You couldn't have got through the wards at all if you didn't have accurate Apparition coordinates and a Slytherin with you."

"Former Slytherin," Harry said, and knew his voice was all wrong, quick and harsh. He looked down and said sharply, "Draco, you're her friend. Will you explain the situation to her and see if you have more success?"

Draco did so, while Harry kicked stones and kicked grass and kicked pebbles and wished that he could kick Bulstrode. But whenever he so much as glanced in her direction, the boarhounds, who had decided that he was definitely a threat, showed their fangs. Harry found he was better off fixing his gaze on his boots.

Somehow, Draco wheedled a small list of five names out of Bulstrode and carried it towards Harry, waving it in triumph. "These are the likely people who bought hippogriff feathers," he said. "She remembers that they were all connected to the man who was murdered, and she's sure that one of them must at least know what happened to the feathers, even if they didn't commit the murder."

Harry nodded, trying to cheer himself up. They had the names, and he'd only had to put up with Draco flaunting himself—

_Unfair, _he thought again, and the realization that he might be making Draco unhappy finally checked his behavior.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I know I acted like an arse back there."

"I never said I minded," Draco said.

Harry had time for a single startled glance before Draco seized his arm and Apparated him to a new destination.

* * *

By the end of the day, Harry had been through so many small and smoking houses, illegal gambling rooms, equally illegal Potions labs, and shops in Knockturn Alley that he could eagerly have gone home to Ginny, despite the loss of time with Draco that that would mean.

Part of it was feeling so absurdly _stupid_. Draco would ask questions that practically reeked of intelligence and follow the long, complicated answers that the brewers or shopkeepers or "talkers"—the term had some meaning in relation to Potions, but Harry didn't know what—gave with thoughtful nods. Then he would ask another question, often getting a smile of approval when he did so, or at least a look of surprise.

Usually, they traded roles more than once during the day. Instead, Harry just got to stand there, scowling, and trying not to let his scar show so much. Of course, people who were willing to talk to Aurors anyway probably weren't that much more intimidated by him, and he got more than one stare that said they knew who he was.

_Scowling at them like I did at Bulstrode, _Harry thought, kicking at the cobblestones as they made their way out of Knockturn Alley. _I'm useless._

"Don't look so gloomy, Potter." Draco laughed at him, practically dancing at his side. "We've eliminated two of the suspects that Millicent gave us, and we're making all sorts of useful contacts."

"We are?" Harry asked without much hope. "And what do you mean, we've eliminated two of the suspects?" he added, with more energy. Draco hadn't told him about _that _when it happened.

"Yes," Draco said. "It has to do with the way the hippogriff feathers were crushed in the victim's mouth. Two of our suspects don't prepare them like that. Out of those who do, there are two who might have a motive, and one who I think is unlikely but might have passed the feathers on to the killer." He was smiling now and returned Harry's incredulous glance with a look so smug that Harry wanted to punch it off his face.

"I don't understand that," Harry said, scratching the back of his skull and hoping that boredom wasn't the sort of thing that would kill him by a slow process of itching.

"That was manifestly obvious," Draco murmured.

"How do we know that the hippogriff feathers weren't just crushed by the pressure of the victim's mouth?" Harry pursued doggedly. "They could have been. They were packed in there pretty tightly, the report said."

"Yes." Draco stopped to peer ahead, as if he were checking into Diagon Alley for danger. "But that wouldn't have damaged their veins, or darkened them, in the particular way the report said they had been darkened. They were used as Potions ingredients first." He turned his head to the side and smirked at Harry. "Of course, it took someone trained in Potions, and good at them, to spot that."

"I was trained in Potions, too," Harry muttered. He knew he sounded like a little boy and didn't care. This was one more example of Draco being smarter than he was, more learned, and Harry felt as though he couldn't compete or catch up.

"That's why I added that second qualifier." Draco looked at him again and burst out laughing, a rich sound that made Harry smile unwillingly in spite of himself. "Come on, Harry, drop that sulky look! I'm sure that a case will come along where you can help me as much as I've helped you today."

Harry had to admit that was true, and he sighed a bit less sulkily as he stepped up beside Draco. It helped that Draco had called him by his first name, something he still didn't do very often. "I sometimes wonder why you want to stay partnered with me. I'm not as consistently good as you are."

Draco stared at him with eyes that appeared to darken as Harry watched. "Do you really not know?" he whispered.

"Tell me," Harry said. He knew he shouldn't as he said it, and like the moment when Draco had him pressed up against the wall, he recklessly wanted this to continue anyway.

Draco bit his lip. "Well, because—"

A bolt of scarlet light cut the night from a roof near the end of Diagon Alley, and Harry was moving before it hit, rolling over, arms around Draco, and drawing his Auror robe over them both so that it could provide a measure of protection.

Someone laughed, above them, and Harry heard the murmur of another spell. But he couldn't deal with that right away, because he was a bit busy dealing with the fact that the edge of the cloak had caught fire and Draco was making grunts of pain beneath him.

Anger made the world clear. Harry tossed his robe off and cast a charm that would strangle the flames by taking away their air even as he drew Draco close against him with one arm. "How badly are you hurt?" he asked, hating the time the request took, but knowing that he would heal Draco first if he was in life-threatening danger.

Draco spoke in a voice shortened by agony. "My collarbone's broken, I think—"

Another bolt of scarlet light. Harry had thought the first one was a Stunner, but of course it couldn't be, not if it caught things on fire and curled like a whip when it first came down, instead of advancing as a straight line. Harry raised a Flexible Shield above them, not large but in the right position to catch the light and devour it.

Then he lowered his wand to touch Draco's neck and gave him the most powerful "healing" charm he could in the circumstances: the Whisper of Peace. Draco gasped as the magic flooded him with bliss to counter the effects of the pain, and he leaned back heavily on Harry, eyelashes fluttering.

Harry looked up at the roof where the spells had come from. No sign of their assailant, and his night vision had never been that good, even without the glasses spoiling things.

He had to crouch there, head already buzzing with fatigue and worry, and try to work out calmly what the attacker would do next. He'd laughed, which suggested that he didn't care about them figuring out where he was. Overconfident? Or just that powerful?

Harry set aside the question as something to figure out later, because he didn't have enough information for right now, and then thought about the magic he'd used. Quick, strong, unusual. That meant Harry should use the same sorts of spells to counter him.

Barely moving his lips, just in case they had a powerful criminal who could see in the dark and lip-read in addition to all his other talents, Harry set shields up around him and Draco. They would stay motionless and invisible until the moment when a hostile spell came near them, and then they had the ability to spread themselves across the air and absorb a blow if necessary. Then Harry enchanted the cobblestones beneath them, and the wall across from them, and the air above their heads.

That didn't take very long, but by the time he finished the last spell, he did wonder if perhaps that attack had been a simple opportunity strike. Maybe the wizard had run away after he was done striking at them.

Then the air next to Harry lit up with a sharp blast of what looked like white water, and he doubted it. Two of his shields reached out, touched, overlapped, and then sent the water leaping back in a rush and roar of light. The stones beneath it turned to slag. Harry swallowed.

"I can sense what you feel for him, you know," said a casual voice above them, and then another laugh followed.

Harry looked up. There was a figure in a cloak that made him look half-grey watching them from the nearest building. Harry held his breath. _Come just a little closer to the edge of the roof, you bastard._

For the moment, at least, their attacker showed no compulsion to do so. He grinned—there was the flash of his own fading spell off disconcertingly bright teeth—and nodded. "I know that you love him," he said. "That's why I'm here."

Harry shivered, glad that he had given Draco the spell he had so that Draco wouldn't overhear or remember this conversation. Of course, that was a pathetic thing to think, and he rallied to respond, "Are you his old lover, then?"

Another laugh, and a second rush of white water. This time, two of the shields curving beneath and above them absorbed the backlash. Harry noticed nervously that the shields were already displaying cracks.

"Don't be ridiculous," the voice said. "I'm here because I can _sense _it, and once I kill you or him, then the buzzing will go away."

_A madman. It would be. _Harry would have liked to send a Patronus, and he probably should have done it in the first place, but he couldn't do it now without lowering their shields. And their retreat was blocked by anti-Apparition wards that Harry had helped set up himself a year ago, when he was still a trainee, to keep criminals emerging from Knockturn Alley from easy escape. It was a frustrating place to be caught.

_And near the place where they found Stegton's body._

Harry stared up into the darkness again. He didn't know if this was a coincidence or really their murderer tipping his hand, but Auror training had taught him to disbelieve in that kind of coincidence.

"I came for him, I come for you, I sense it," the voice chanted from above, removing the last of Harry's doubt, and another spell struck the shields, though this time hard enough that Harry couldn't even see what it looked like; the crash against the shields made his head ring and his sight blur.

Harry bowed his head, shielding Draco with his body, and heard hisses over his hair, with flashes of heat passing near his face, but nothing actually landing and stinging. He wanted to capture this man, not kill him, if it was their killer, but protecting Draco was still the most important thing he needed to do.

How could he do both when he would need to break free of his defenses to launch an effective offensive strike?

Then Harry smiled. His training had taught him that, too. When a situation seemed impossible to handle in a normal way, what did you do?

_You go in an unexpected direction._

He dropped flat, arranging Draco so that he lay draped over Harry's chest, and waved his wand. The stones underneath them creaked and groaned, disrupting the protections Harry had put on them, but that was only one layer. The shields were still holding out, and the voice was cackling and calling now from the edge of the building on which its owner crouched, meaning Harry could trigger the next trap.

He whispered the incantation that would do it at the same time as he wrapped his arms even more firmly around Draco and pressed his face into Harry's chest.

There was a shriek as coils of wire shot out from among the bricks and curled around the criminal's feet. That wouldn't hold him for long, Harry thought, especially since he knew unusual magic, but they would slow him down a bit.

Meanwhile, the cobblestones rose around them in a wave of churning mud and then sucked them under the street.

Harry had only cast this spell in training sessions, never with his life and his partner's hanging on it. That didn't matter. Once again, danger to Draco clarified and settled his thoughts, and he snapped the next part of it nonverbally, clenching his fingers around his wand as earth tried to flow into his mouth.

Draco whimpered against his chest. Harry intended to perform the spells fast enough so that they wouldn't have to spend long underground and Draco could breathe. He thought he was doing it quickly enough—

And then he was, because he felt the spell picking them up and whirling them along and sideways. And up.

The Moving Earth Spell depended on the fact that most things on the earth were _connected _to the earth. Trees ran their roots down into it. Water lay within it. Roads lay on it.

And so did the foundations of buildings.

Harry and Draco exploded out of the roof that their attacker stood on, right behind him. Harry aimed his wand as Draco groaned in discomfort, grateful to hear him take a breath of clean air, and the attacker gasped and whirled about.

He was a young man, with a long black beard and wild, wide eyes, and a stink like someone who hadn't bathed in weeks, and that was all Harry had time to notice before his Stunner knocked the man down.

He lay where he was for a minute, clearing away the dirt from Draco's mouth and nose with sweeps of his hand while he studied the man to make sure that he wouldn't suddenly revive again. Draco moaned. Harry pulled back to study his face, and found that his Whisper of Peace must have dissipated, because Draco was staring at him with dawning confusion and pain.

"What happened?" he whispered.

"Sorry," Harry said, because he suddenly realized that he was lying close to Draco and enjoying it far too much. He yanked himself back and rose on his fingertips, stretching his legs out, ignoring Draco's bright, almost ravenous stare. "I used the Moving Earth Spell to bring us up through the house and behind him. And it looks like this might just be the one who killed Stegton."

Draco smiled, then winced and touched his collarbone. "Only you, Potter," he said. "I'll need you to explain that to me again when we're both coherent." He sniffed and looked down at his robe sleeve, where dirt was ingrained along the cuff. "And clean."

"Only you, Draco," Harry retorted, and called his Patronus.

* * *

"From what we can tell, this man—called Garth Newnham, by the way—is a victim of one of Stegton's love potions."

Draco nodded as if he understood what Wellington was talking about. Harry didn't, and because he knew that people expected him to be less intelligent than Draco in the first place, he felt free to ask. "If he loved Stegton, whether by potion or not, why would he want to kill him?"

Wellington shook her head. "As I suspect you probably know, Auror Potter, having been a target of them yourself—"

Harry got a wry look from Draco, which he ignored. It wasn't as though he was unintelligent enough to eat the sweets or consume the "tea" that certain parties still insisted on sending him through the post. _Give me that much credit, at least._

"Love potions cannot truly initiate love. They create lust instead. However, the problem with this particular potion is that it was badly-made, or else Stegton lost interest before adding a crucial last ingredient." Wellington waved her arm. "We can't learn much from Newnham himself. The potion has deranged him. But our brewers will test him and see what they can learn about the potion from his blood."

"I'll wager," Draco drawled, his eyes half-shut, "that you'll learn the missing ingredient was hippogriff feathers."

Wellington nodded to Draco, while Harry tried not to stare at him in admiration. "You are more than likely correct, Auror Malfoy. It seems that Newnham retains a bit of rationality. After he killed Stegton, he remained in the area, and he was carrying hippogriff feathers in his pockets. According to him, he was waiting for people he could 'sense.'"

"What does that mean?" Harry asked, feeling his pulse increase. Newnham had said several things during the fight that could mean the worst for Harry, and he didn't dare look at Draco.

"Apparently, he can sense people in love," Wellington said. "The botched potion gave him that ability, and since Stegton seems to have fallen in love frequently, it probably has something to do with how Newnham tracked him down. When he sensed true love, he struck." She gave Harry a gentle smile. "He probably felt your love for your wife, Auror Potter."

"Yeah, of course," Harry muttered. He was the only one who knew that _couldn't _be true, because he didn't want Ginny in that burning, passionate way.

When he looked at Draco, Draco looked totally normal. He asked a few more questions about potions information that Wellington answered, and then they could leave the office.

They walked slowly down the corridor, and then Draco put out his arm. Harry looked up warily.

Draco stared at him from less than an inch away, and his body vibrated with life. He looked as if he were close to reaching out and pulling Harry to him by the sleeves.

"I wasn't so unconscious or in so much pain that I didn't hear what Newnham said," he whispered, touching his Healed collarbone.

Harry hadn't expected his own panic to be so quiet. It was like being trampled by horses while he couldn't scream, couldn't run, couldn't do a bloody thing about it.

"He said that you loved _him_," Draco said. "Who is _him_?"

Harry wavered on the brink of destroying either his marriage—if he told the truth—or his partnership—if he lied about this, said the quivering vulnerability on Draco's face, then Draco would never trust him again.

Or maybe he would destroy his partnership if he told the truth, too. Why would Draco want to work with someone he couldn't completely trust, someone who had kept this secret this long?

_Well, at least Ginny will get what she wants and the Aurors will break our partnership up, _Harry thought with as much humor as he still possessed while he drew in a deep breath and took the only course he could.

"You," he said. "It's you."

Draco's eyes widened and blazed with something Harry couldn't name. Then he shut his face down and whirled around, striding in the opposite direction, away from Harry, away from the corridor that led to their office. By the time he reached the nearest corner, he was running, back tight with rejection.

Harry shut his eyes. The destruction of one's heart could be quiet, too.

* * *

That was the third step.


	4. The Fourth Step

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _Stepping Stones_. I hope you've enjoyed it.

_Chapter Four—The Fourth Step_

Harry was glad that he had a lot of experience in living with pain, because that was what he had to do for the next little while.

He allowed himself five minutes of standing in the corridor, alone, after Draco had left him. Then he went home and told the triumphant story of the case to Ginny. She laughed and gasped in all the right places, which meant Harry had to smile in the right places himself and pretend to be as proud of the case as she was of him.

She wanted to celebrate in bed. Harry had never felt less like sex, and for once, he didn't try to drive himself to the extremes he usually did. He pleaded tiredness, and Ginny kissed him and snuggled against his shoulder to fall asleep with an understanding smile.

Meanwhile, Harry stared at the ceiling and decided, carefully, how the next few days would go.

He spoke to Wellington the next morning by Floo and asked for a holiday. He hadn't had one so far, and no doubt Wellington, from her tolerant smile, thought he would use this one to stay at home and celebrate with the wife he almost hadn't made it back to. Harry let her think so, and hoped Wellington wouldn't check on whether Ginny had gone to work herself. But then, Wellington seemed to watch him and Draco more closely than the other partnerships, because she knew Harry had had doubts about it from the beginning.

_More doubts than ever, now, _Harry thought, and spent a bit of time with the back of his hand pressed to his eyes before he stood up and moved on to the next part of the plan.

He finished the report on the Stegton case and owled it to Draco for his signature. Then he spent some time looking up laws on private duels, and more advertisements than he had known existed in the _Daily Prophet _about what kinds of private dueling instructors already existed. If he was going to make his living this way—and he couldn't go on being an Auror—he would probably need some classes.

Amazingly, though, it seemed he didn't need any of that. The duelists recommended themselves on the basis of "ancient secrets" and "good performance in Defense Against the Dark Arts." (The names above some of those claims made Harry smile for the first time since his parting with Draco). People probably chose the ones that sounded best or most exciting and took their chances from there.

He would have more clients than he could handle, he thought, just because of his name. He'd have to choose carefully.

Prices that the dueling instructors charged for their classes also seemed to vary. Harry decided to set his somewhere in the middle. He wanted payments that would put his wages somewhere close to what they had been as an Auror.

After all, the hardest part of this was going to be convincing Ginny that he hadn't lost his mind and wanted to change his career for a reason.

Then he set about writing his resignation letter. He had to keep pausing during it, but that was all right, because no one else was at home, or peering through the window.

He spent the pauses thinking about Draco, and what Draco would think when Harry sent in the letter.

It was cowardly, Harry admitted to himself, and he would be lying yet again when he said that the Auror career had finally struck him as too dangerous. But he couldn't imagine working with Draco as matters stood. Either they would dance around each other, which would cause the friendship and trust that made their partnership strong to crumble, or Draco would give the kind of defensive speech about how he was straight that Harry couldn't bear to listen to. He _knew _that already. He had only told the truth because Draco had asked.

_Would you leave Ginny if he asked? _

But that question didn't matter, because he never would. Harry smiled bitterly at nothing and finished the letter, though he didn't send it off yet. He would talk to Ginny this evening, and he was confident that she would at least see genuine unhappiness on his face, even if the cause wasn't what he said it was.

* * *

"I don't accept it."

Harry stared at Ginny with his mouth open. She stood in front of the fire, arms folded and eyes hard. The flames behind her made her hair seem to glow with rich light, and Harry admired her absently even as his brain reeled from the words she'd just spoken. He'd laid out his case, explained that the risk to his life from Stegton last night had shaken him more than it should and shown him he wasn't cut out for Auror work, and that he was going to do something else, not rely on her to support him. It sounded convincing. It should have convinced her.

Why hadn't it?

"But I really don't want to be an Auror anymore," Harry began, wondering what else he could say. "I'm starting to think I jumped before I was ready, before I knew enough about myself to make that kind of decision. Everyone thought I would be an Auror, and I decided that I should, too. But it's not what I really want."

"How can you know that based on _one _case, which wasn't as difficult as some of your others?" Ginny planted a hand on her hip and looked at him skeptically, gnawing on her lip the way she sometimes did when she was trying to figure out the way his brain worked. "I don't see why this should change your mind."

"It was the last straw," Harry said, grateful to Hermione for having said that the last time they were at the Burrow, to explain why she had given up on working with one of her more prejudiced colleagues after a tiny remark. "Not the case itself, but the weight of the case combined with everything else."

"How?" Ginny sat down this time, which was at least an improvement over the way she'd been standing, though the intent gaze she fixed on him wasn't. "Tell me how."

Harry hadn't prepared that elaborate a structure of lies. He stumbled through something about not wanting to lose his life, and how Newnham had been mad, and how he had only solved the case by coincidence and felt inadequate about that. In fact, all those were true, but they fell one by one into Ginny's listening, obdurate silence and failed to dent it.

"I don't think so," she said at last, voice calm but inflexible. "I want you to reconsider this decision, and talk to Wellington tomorrow. If she agrees, then maybe I'll agree. But I think right now that you're running away from a difficulty."

"What difficulty?" Harry knew his voice was too harsh from the way Ginny turned her head and focused her eyes on him.

"I don't appreciate it when you talk to me that way," she said coolly.

"Sorry," Harry said, and massaged his face. It felt hot, and he wished he could claim ill health on account of a fever. But the fever burning in his blood was impossible to explain to Ginny. He had sacrificed his partnership; he really wanted his marriage to last. "But I don't know what you mean."

"The difficulty is working with Malfoy." Ginny's voice softened and became kind. "Look, Harry, I've noticed that you don't talk about him as often in the last few months as you used to. I think that's a telltale sign that you're not enamored of him, that you wish you didn't have to spend time with him. But make it through a year, and then we can see about you being reassigned to someone else. Surely they'll notice if your solve rates go down because of how useless he is."

"He wasn't useless yesterday," Harry snapped, while he mentally reeled from the idea that not talking about Draco meant he wasn't enamored. _Why did she have to phrase it that way?_

"Whatever you say," Ginny said. "But you were the one who solved the case, and I've noticed that you're usually the decisive factor, the one who actually does with the case what the Ministry wanted done with it. And I think you don't really want to quit. You just want to be away from Malfoy."

Harry touched his forehead, and wished that he still had the scar as an excuse for the hot poison burning through him. Ginny had hit on the right reason, but by a wrong chain of reasoning—so elaborately wrong, in fact, that he wanted to sob with laughter and curse at the same time.

"You could be right," he said. "But if I find it intolerable to work with him right now, how am I going to survive the rest of the year?"

Ginny moved then, coming over to him and wrapping her arms around him. "I don't know," she whispered into his ear. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize what it was like for you. Talk to Wellington, and maybe she'll agree to assign you elsewhere."

Harry pulled back to look her in the eyes. "And if she doesn't, and I can't stand it?"

Ginny took a deep breath and glanced at the table next to him. "Well. Then you have the resignation letter."

* * *

The conversation with Wellington was a disappointment. She simply gave him a serene look all the way through, her expression never altering, and Harry was finally turned away with a vague promise of changing things if they became "truly intolerable" and advising him to think long and hard about whether he wanted to destroy a partnership this good.

"Have you thought about whether Auror Malfoy wants to be forced to work with me?" Harry tried that last tactic on the threshold of her office, where she'd gently escorted him. "He might not."

Wellington looked into his eyes, and then at the resignation letter he still carried in one hand. "If you can get Auror Malfoy to sign this, then I will reconsider my decision."

So Harry was striding down the corridor to their office again, his back prickling with sweat and all his careful contrivances flown out of his mind. He had wanted to avoid a confrontation with Draco. Just thinking about it made his head whirl. The pain in the center of his chest, constant ever since Draco's rejection, throbbed like a newly-open wound.

He stood in front of the door for long moments before he could make himself knock. His skin was cold and slick. He knew he was a coward, and he didn't care. Being brave got him _hurt_.

_And got other people hurt, too, _he thought. He didn't believe Draco would have run away from him the other evening if he had felt only indifference or amusement at Harry's suggestion.

The door opened at once. Harry stepped in, half-hoping that Draco would be snogging Astoria against the wall and he could leave. Or drop the resignation letter on the desk and run. If this was in the middle of an awkward moment, then surely Draco wouldn't have any trouble—

"Where have you _been_, you bastard?"

Once again, Draco's hands closed on his arms. Once again, he practically hurled Harry into the wall. Once again, Harry felt his eyes flutter and his face burn when Draco pressed close against him.

This time, though, the pain was stronger. He looked at Draco long enough to make out his salt-pale face and very wide eyes, and then shoved him away. He held up the resignation letter. "All you need to do is sign this," he said. "And then we can leave each other alone, hopefully for the rest of our lives."

Draco seized the letter, so hard that Harry feared he might rip it. Then he turned his back to read it. Harry rubbed his aching arms and wondered what someone would think if they walked by and saw him hunched against the wall like that. On the other hand, he wasn't about to shut the door when he was alone in a room with Draco.

_Something that will never happen again. _And instead of a balm to the wound in him, that made it burn all the harder. Harry shook his head. He didn't understand why he had fallen in love with Draco, he didn't understand why he didn't just fall in love with Ginny since he was capable of that kind of passion, and he didn't understand his own reactions.

_A right mess, I am._

"Do you know what this says?" Draco turned around with an expression on his face Harry had never seen before, but he was wise enough to know that it meant he should try to get out of the room with his limbs intact. He licked his lips and compromised by moving a step away from Draco, in the direction of the door.

"Of course," he said. "I wrote it, after all."

All of Draco's living, snarling movement became stillness in an instant. Harry peered at him warily from under his fringe. Ever since he broke up with Astoria, Draco's moods had changed like that. Maybe he needed a girlfriend to keep him steady and sane. He would need one to make him happy in the future.

Harry's throat burned at the thought the way it had when he had seen Astoria with Draco at the Ministry party, but he did his very best to ignore that. _His path will always lie with someone who's not you. The very least you can do is try and be happy for him in turn, and never _show _your jealousy the way you were foolish enough to show your other feelings._

Then Draco was pointing his wand at Harry, who dived out of the way instinctively. The spell flew past him, slammed the office door shut, and covered it with what looked like a great, fuzzy mass of bread mold. Harry, staring at it, had the unhappy impression that no sound would pass in or out.

"You thought you could avoid this," Draco's voice said from behind him, so thick that Harry worried about him in turn. He stood up and put his back to the door, reluctantly, only to find Draco moving towards him with light predator's steps. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in an expression that didn't inspire confidence, either, and his eyes…Harry had never seen his eyes look like that. "I'm the one to tell you that you can't. I'm the one you should have been responsible to, in the first place. You should have come in and fucking _told _me. You shouldn't have thought that you could leave this behind."

"You're not yourself," was Harry's response. It had to be. Saying something violent and angry would simply upset Draco further. He had one hand down at his side, canted around his hip and his wand, but he wouldn't draw it unless it became necessary to defend his own life.

"I'm more myself at the moment than I've been since we left Auror training," Draco retorted, though he did stop a few feet away and rock there, staring at Harry. "How could you—I didn't think you were a coward. Not that."

"How long did I keep the truth from you?" Harry said, despite the pain clinging to the mention of the idea. If he could make Draco think about the thing that troubled _him_ most, then maybe he could make him see why he had to do this. "I'm a coward. I always knew that. I never wanted to be a coward to you, but it happened, and I have to go away to keep it from happening again."

Draco gave that unnerving smile again and came closer. Harry clenched his fingers around the wand, but, like an idiot, didn't draw it. Ron would say that he was an idiot, at least. He must be. He had to be.

Draco reached out and planted a hand on the wall directly above Harry's head. He leaned closer, and his breath raked over Harry's face. It didn't smell the best, to be honest, as if he'd been eating strong cheese.

"Do you know _why_ I'm more myself right now than I ever have been since the end of Auror training?" he whispered.

"Why?" Harry asked back, also in a whisper. His training was telling him that he shouldn't be doing this; Draco had all the dangerous signs that they'd been told to watch out for in Dark wizards or others who might kill Aurors. But he was drawn hopelessly along, at least while Draco spoke like that and didn't actually try to kill him.

_Even then, I might not fight._

"Because the end of Auror training was when they partnered me with you." Draco's teeth were _all _showing now, and he looked Harry straight in the eye without blinking, instead of off to the side as he usually did. "That partnership was the beginning of what changed me. Corrupted me, I would almost say, except that the ending is going to be different."

Harry ignored the last words, which he didn't understand, and focused on the ones that seemed likely to make Draco agree. "I know," he said. "It corrupted you because I worked with you. I'm sorry."

Draco shook his head, and went on shaking it, long past the point where he should have stopped. Harry remembered something Hermione had told him once, years ago, or something he had read, that said bears shook their heads like that to express anger. He would have shivered, except that he still couldn't move.

"I'm more myself now," Draco whispered, "because you were lying to me, and now you're telling the truth. I'm more myself now because I know that you're in love with me." He grinned again, as if that was the most exciting news he had ever heard.

Harry cast a worried glance at the door, and then remembered the fuzzy spell Draco had cast over it. He relaxed.

Draco followed his gaze, and laughed, nastily. "Afraid that someone might overhear you? What's the matter, you don't have the strength to confess that to anyone but me?"

"No, I don't," Harry said, deciding, once again, that the truth was the best road to take, and not only because it might give Draco pause. Harry just didn't have a lot of other _options _when dealing with Draco. Too much of his soul was bound up in the man. "I married Ginny knowing I didn't love her. I assumed Voldemort had damaged something in me and I'd lost the ability. I wanted to make her happy. And then I realized I was jealous over you when you dated Astoria, and I realized what that meant, and since then, I've just been struggling to live with it. But I can't be your partner anymore, now that you know."

Draco stared at him in silence for long minutes. His expression had gone completely unreadable. Harry started to edge to the side, assuming that Draco would let him go, but Draco reached over and seized his upper arm, squeezing to hold him in place. He didn't seem to notice when Harry winced.

"I'm the only person you've ever been in love with," Draco whispered. "You're not struggling with half your heart in your wife's possession and half in mine. It all belongs to me."

"You don't have to be nasty about it," Harry said, stiffening his shoulders. If he couldn't stand up for himself because of guilt that he had lied to Draco, he could still stand up for Ginny. "Yes, I fucked up. Now, will you sign the bloody resignation letter and let me out of here?"

"You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" Draco's grin was a little less terrifying, but still present, and he pushed himself against Harry's body as though he thought they would fuck through their clothes. Harry glanced aside, wondering why he'd believed Draco had got rid of his meanness from Hogwarts.

"No, I don't," Harry said, when he realized Draco hadn't paused for dramatic effect but because he really wanted an answer. "_Let me go_." He reached up and pushed against Draco's shoulders, hoping that would convince him to back off.

Draco shook his head. "I've been thinking about it," he whispered. "I think we could get along. In fact, this might make our partnership even better." He traced one line from Harry's collarbone up towards his ear.

Harry had never realized that that skin could be so sensitive. He gaped at Draco for a moment before he grabbed his hand and threw it off. Draco winced, but didn't back away. He remained near, staring into Harry's eyes, his breathing still fast.

"You're mental," Harry snapped. "I'm not going to cheat on Ginny with someone who rejected me."

"Does this feel like rejection?" Draco leaned forwards and fastened his lips on the corner of Harry's jaw, lightly sucking.

Harry pushed him off again, pained and furious and hard. He took the chance to slip away from the wall and wheel around in the center of the room, between their desks. Draco watched him, cheeks bright.

"You're not in love with me," Harry said, and tried to pour as much scorn into the words as he could. "Maybe you just really don't want our partnership dissolved. Don't worry; I'll tell them that you did an exemplary job." _At making me want to pound you into the desk. _"Maybe you want to make me cheat on Ginny. I'm not going to let that happen, either." He drew his wand and aimed it at Draco. "Get the fuck out of my way."

Draco leaned one hand on his desk. His eyes were enormous, drowning, the expressions in them difficult to read. "I could be," he said.

"What?" Harry had been listening for an actual response to his questions, and so he stared at Draco, knowing his face was blank.

"I could be in love with you," Draco said. "If you give me the chance. If you let me learn. I already know that I'm closer to you than anyone else, and when I was dating Astoria, my thoughts were always straying to you."

"Of course they were," Harry said. He hated the hope he was feeling. Hope hurt. And it really _wasn't _the right reaction in this situation. He didn't think there was one. "We work together."

"I love it when you act jealous over me," Draco continued, moving closer. His eyes had narrowed a bit now, and he looked as if he never intended to glance away from Harry ever again. It was horrifying. It was nerve-racking. It was arousing. "There's nothing I'd rather feel than you against me. I trust you with my life, and I'll trust you with more than that."

"Stop it," Harry said, but his voice croaked. His will was weak. If it had been strong, he'd have ended the partnership with Draco the moment he realized there was a problem. Instead, he was still letting it go on.

"I know this could be the best thing in my life," Draco said. He had dropped the rictus-smile, and all that was left was the intense focus. "Let me in. Please."

Harry closed his eyes, pictured Ginny, and blurted out, "If all that's true, then why did you run away at first?"

Silence. At least Draco didn't try to lean against him and kiss him, which might have defeated Harry's argument in ways and for reasons that he hated to think about. After a moment, Harry forced his eyes open and looked.

Draco hovered near him, still, but he was frowning. Harry held his breath, hating and hoping, both at once, that he had managed to force reason back into Draco's skull.

"I was afraid," Draco said finally. "I'd teased myself with the conclusion that you might like me as more than a friend and partner, played with it, based on some of your behavior, but I didn't dare actually _believe _it. To have it come true in front of me was more than I could handle. So I had to get away." He looked back up at Harry as if suddenly realizing he was still in the room and gave him a lazy smile. "But I'm here now, and fully willing to be."

Harry stopped him with an outstretched arm when Draco started to move forwards again. "And what's going to happen the next time you're frightened? If we face opposition when this becomes public? If people accuse you of stealing me from Ginny, the way they _will_?"

Draco hesitated. Then he said, "It doesn't need to become public."

"Yes, it would have to." Harry found he was on steadier ground now, and Draco's physical presence seemed a little less overwhelming. He folded his arms, to keep his hands out of temptation's way, and glared. "I won't date someone who wants to treat our relationship like a dirty little secret."

"I only meant—" Draco half-turned away and touched his fingers to his temple as if fighting a forming headache. "It doesn't have to become public right away. And your wife might not mind."

"Oh, yes, she would," Harry said softly, thinking of the way Ginny had sounded when she was talking to Hermione and hadn't known he was there. Devastated just because she sensed his attention straying. If he actually strayed… "She would very much."

"Why?" Draco demanded, eyes narrowed as though he had suddenly seen a way to punch through Harry's reluctance. "Don't tell me she doesn't have someone on the side herself."

That broke the trance that had still gripped Harry. He leaned back and sneered. "She doesn't. And you, meanwhile, want me to risk my marriage for someone who's afraid to be with me, and who has to insult my wife rather than focusing on the rightness of what we're doing together."

"You've already risked your marriage, falling in love with me," Draco said.

"But that was involuntary. The actions I choose to take have to be of my own free will." Harry threw the resignation letter on his desk. "I'm leaving."

"Please don't." Draco stepped back from him, but squeezed his eyes closed as though the step had been a different one, off a very tall building. "I don't think I can get along with you. I know that I can't function with a different partner."

That was what made Harry almost turn back. The hints of vulnerability in Draco's perfect-seeming mask, the trust that he showed to Harry by allowing him to see those hints in the first place…

But he thought of Ginny, whose vulnerability was pledged to him in marriage, and the fact that Draco still didn't really know what he wanted and might just be lonely, and pulled himself back again.

"I'm sorry," he said gently. "I would have stopped myself from falling in love with you if I could. I think it'll only fuck up both our lives. But leaving is my attempt to stop it from fucking them up quite as badly as it could have."

Draco looked at him bleakly. "You won't stay for me, as your partner and friend, if not your lover?" he whispered.

Harry looked at him across the expanse of the office, his slowly reassembling pride, and saw the man he had fallen in love with. Draco had had his moments of cowardice, but Harry had had whole months and years of it, refusing to tell Ginny the truth, and then refusing to acknowledge what it meant when he fell in love. Harry couldn't despise Draco for not being sure of what he wanted.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "There are some sacrifices that just won't make anyone happy, and only delay the inevitable."

"And this is another of them," Draco said lowly.

Harry pretended he didn't hear him as he left.

* * *

It was stupid, how useless he felt.

Ginny had looked at him long and hard when Harry informed her he'd stopped being an Auror, but suggested that he take a few days to decide what he wanted to do before he started accepting clients as a private dueling instructor. After all, perhaps that wasn't what he wanted after all. She would hate for him to make an impulse decision, she said, and then spend the next few months or years suffering because of it.

Harry tried to ignore the tone in her voice when she said that, and the way she watched him out of one corner of her eye.

Ron and Hermione didn't take the news any more calmly. Ron stared at Harry for a long time the night he announced his decision at the Burrow, and after his parents had stopped fussing and turned to listen to the news of Fleur's next pregnancy, he tugged Harry aside into the drawing room.

"Really, mate? You're leaving?" Ron shook his head, then paused and shook it again, as if the shaking would make the truth pop loose and let him understand Harry's perspective. "Why? Did Malfoy drive you out?"

"Nothing like that," Harry said hastily, because he didn't want Draco to pay the price for his leaving at the end of Ron's fists. He didn't want Draco to pay any price at all. This was Harry's fault, Harry's mess, and he would have to clean it up. "I decided that I'd rather live a calm life, that's all. I spent enough time fighting Dark wizards in the war. I don't want to do that for years on end."

Ron stared him in the eye for so long that Harry's own eyes started watering with trying not to blink. Then Ron shook his head yet again, and said, "Yeah, I don't buy it."

Harry said, "Why?" and he thought he said it in a calm and collected manner, too, though his voice was squeaky enough for Ron to give him a wry look.

"Because," Ron said, "you don't change your mind overnight about something like that. I could buy it if you'd been an Auror for years and the cases got to you, but a few months after we finished training? No."

"I didn't think it was going to be like this in training," Harry muttered, which was true. When he'd been in training, he'd always assumed that he would have Ginny as a partner and that he would never have to face a mistake as fundamental as whether or not he'd married the wrong person. "I have the right to change my mind."

"Maybe, but I think you're lying to yourself and you'll miss it," Ron began. Then he must have seen something in Harry's face, because he exhaled and grabbed him, hugging him hard. "But if you have to, then you have to. I won't trouble you anymore."

Hermione summoned him to the Ministry and her office and quizzed him there, up one side and down the other, in between a series of flying memos and documents that required her signature. Harry tried to talk about how apparently she was high up in the hierarchy of the Ministry already, but Hermione waved a hand.

"That's just hard work," she said. "And people gave up after I shouted at them. Now." She leaned insistently forwards. "I know you wanted to be an Auror. Not even all the attention you got after the war and the difficulties of training made you give up. Why now?"

_Everything would become instantly comprehensible if I could just tell them about Draco, _Harry thought tiredly, closing his eyes.

But that would be a betrayal of both Draco and Ginny. Draco didn't deserve Harry's friends thinking he had done something to lead Harry astray, when nothing could be further from the truth, and Ginny didn't deserve her husband confessing to being bent when he'd never leave her anyway.

"I don't know," Harry said, and stared at her bleakly. "Haven't you ever felt like you just _had _to make a decision, whether or not it was the right one, because staying in the condition that you were in at first was intolerable?"

Hermione paused with her hand on the nearest memo, and her face softened, for the first time all day. Harry sighed in relief. That meant she was about to be easier on him.

"Of course," she said. "I felt like that when we were traveling around in search of the Horcruxes and not finding them. And when Ron kissed me during the final battle and then didn't do another thing for _months and months, _so I had to coax him along."

Harry choked. That had been a bit more information than he ever wanted to know about his best friends. Still, that had its uses.

"You see?" he asked quickly. "If it's happened to you—and you've usually known what you wanted more than I did—then it could happen to me."

"It could." Hermione touched the back of his hand as though she thought he would get angrier at a heavier touch. "But I don't think that that's what happened here."

Harry ground his teeth. "Why not?" He tried to keep his voice polite, but Hermione leaned forwards and peered into his eyes as if she could see words written there that would tell her what Harry had tried to conceal.

"Because it's too sudden," Hermione said. "I know that you loved your job. It was all you talked about. And even your partnership with Malfoy couldn't have been that bad, although you didn't mention him often after the first few months." _Yeah, well, _Harry thought rebelliously, _let's see you fall in love with someone other than the person everyone's assumed you should be with and see how well you handle it. _"Did something else happen? You can tell me, if you want. I won't tell Ron."

But there was no promise to keep silent to Ginny, and in any case, Harry didn't think he could betray the secret without Draco's consent, now. He shook his head, lips pinched shut, and Hermione sighed in that way she always did when she was trying to help people out of the goodness of her heart and they simply would not cooperate.

"I just hope that you're right about the silence, Harry," she said, and turned back to her complex but not complicated world as Harry slipped out of the office.

It was hard because those were the first few weeks, Harry told himself. It would be easier, much easier, once he had grown used to this decision, and then everyone else would, too.

Ginny adjusted and started encouraging him to look for dueling instructor jobs. Ron and Hermione gave him curious glances, but seemed to have waited until he was ready to discuss it. Mrs. Weasley sent him several plates of food and invitations to talk, and then got distracted by other events in her huge family.

He had forgotten there was one more direction from which an objection might come.

* * *

The knock woke Harry at once, although it was a single, muffled sound. He had trained himself to sleep lightly not long after he began in the Auror program. Who knew when hearing one small sound could be the difference between life and death?

He sat up, reaching for his wand, and looked anxiously at Ginny. But she slept on, even when the knock repeated.

Harry didn't think it was anything dangerous, by now, or the wards would have reacted. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, put on his glasses, flung on a robe that was lying over the back of the bedroom chair, and cautiously went down the stairs.

The ground floor of their house looked strange and dangerous in the moonlight, though Harry had seen it like that plenty of times before. He told himself it was the lingering remnants of his dream and his fear, and opened the door.

Draco stood there, back turned to Harry, arms wrapped around himself as though he were freezing, even though it was a summer night.

Harry knew the feeling.

Then Draco turned around to face him, and his eyes were so wide and face so white that Harry thought he must have come about something related to Auror business after all. He moved back, holding the door open, and whispered, "What's wrong?"

Draco shook his head and remained in place, trembling now. "Not there," he whispered. "I won't enter the house where you live with your _wife_."

Stung, Harry stepped out to join him and shut the door behind him. "What is your _problem_, then?" he asked in a voice that he kept low. He didn't want to alert Ginny, but at the same time, he didn't want to act as though he was hiding a dirty secret with Draco. He had nothing really to hide, now, not since he had made his decisions and done the best he could to live up to them. "Why come here if you hate this place?"

Draco remained silent for so long that Harry considered going back inside. And then Draco replied, in a flat voice that nevertheless thrummed along Harry's nerves.

"I need you."

Harry shut his eyes and told himself that this was _not_ what he had wanted for so long, that it might meant any number of things. After some attempts that ended in dry chokes, he found his voice.

"You can learn to work with a new partner. Give yourself time. If the new one is someone who doesn't like Death Eaters, then—"

"Don't be an idiot."

That sounded more like the Draco he knew, assertive and snappish. Harry looked again. Draco leaned towards him, one hand extended and laid flat as if he was touching an invisible wall that loomed between them. Well, no matter what he thought, the invisible wall had to stay there, Harry thought, staring back.

"If it was only the work," Draco said, "the way I thought it was at first, I wouldn't feel like I'm missing a limb. I wouldn't be constantly turning to share a joke and realizing you're not there. I wouldn't lie awake at night tormenting myself with fantasies of what we could have and then crying out in misery when I come, and come back to reality."

Harry's lips were so dry that he had to push at them before he could speak. "But—but that doesn't mean that you're in love with me," he said.

"What the fuck does it mean, then?" Draco's voice was savage. He pushed forwards, and Harry had the sudden, terrifying vision of the invisible wall between them disappearing. He should move backwards, prove it was still there and would be no matter how Draco pushed, because the wall was made of his will. But he couldn't force his legs to work as he listened to Draco's tirade. "I've never been in love before, either! I don't know how it _works_. I only know I want you, lust after you, struggle to stand on my own without you, like you, want to be _with _you. There's no other name to give that, no other name I know, except love."

Harry shut his eyes again, because that was the only way he could deny what was happening. "It sounds unhealthy to me," he said, desperately clinging to some of the language Hermione had taught him. "Have you seen a Mind-Healer? You need to be complete in yourself, not dependent on me—"

"Fuck _that_."

Draco covered the distance between them, as though the wall had ceased to exist. Harry opened his eyes and stared, because it should have held—

And then he realized, in the same moment as Draco's hands closed on his arms and Draco leaned forwards to shove his tongue into Harry's mouth, that the wall was made up of Draco's fear, too. Without that, and because Harry's will had wavered, there was nothing to hold him back.

And Draco's fear was gone.

Harry moaned and lost himself for long minutes to the way Draco _pushed_ at him, the shove of tongue and the grip of fingers digging into his arms and the taste that seemed driven straight into his nostrils and lips by the way Draco kissed him. He couldn't describe that taste more accurately than "hot," but that didn't seem to be a problem. Nothing mattered but the clench and the push and the shove.

Then he felt the press of wood against his back, and wondered what it was, and remembered the doorframe.

That they stood kissing in front of his house, wide open in the night to anyone who wanted to see them, anyone who might be lurking around the Chosen One's house in the hope of capturing some amazing shot.

The house he shared with Ginny.

Harry had to find the same strength he'd discovered in the office, buried deeper this time, to push Draco away. And it was even harder because Draco braced his feet and pinched cruelly rather than stop the kiss. Harry nearly gave in, luxuriating in the touch and the satisfaction of having who he wanted, at last.

But it wasn't enough. It never would be, when he would ruin Ginny's life right along with everything else.

So he pushed Draco away, and stood there panting, raising one hand. He thought he should wipe his lips, to express rejection. He thought he should do _something _to show Draco that he didn't just accept what Draco had chosen to hand him.

He couldn't do it. He was licking his lips too much, savoring the taste there, and Draco was looking at him with rage, scorn, something close to hatred, lust, and triumph.

"I knew it would be like that," he whispered. "Or more intense. Like that." He stepped forwards again, one hand curving as though he held an invisible wand. "What's going to happen if I touch you again?"

"I don't know." Harry's voice was so hoarse, so ragged and broken. No use pretending that he hadn't participated. He had sinned against Ginny. The only thing he could do was make sure that it never happened again, by exiling Draco from his life.

"No, you don't." Draco's expression shifted, becoming both softer and slyer. The hatred was gone, but the triumph burned so bright Harry cast an instinctive glance upwards, thinking it would awaken Ginny. "Because you've never been touched in that way in your life before, and neither have I. We both _need _this."

Harry lifted both hands to form as much of a wall as he could, though the barriers felt shattered and he didn't know that he would ever get them back in the same condition again. "I can't do that. I married Ginny. She loves me. She depends on me. She would be devastated if I left."

He had thought that argument would have one of two effects: either Draco would storm away in disgust or get so upset he couldn't argue coherently. Instead, Draco's smile sharpened with amusement, and he leaned one shoulder against the door. Harry's breath quickened. He couldn't _help _it, he thought defensively. Draco looked like the perfect mixture of the schoolboy Harry had known, the cold man he'd met that first day in the office, and the partner and friend he'd come to know.

Harry had sometimes had the impression before that Draco was fragmented, showing only those facets of his personality in the Auror office that would be acceptable there, suppressing his tendency to break the rules along with half the rest of himself. Now, for the first time, all the aspects of Draco Malfoy were whole, complete.

Integrated.

"And your absence does worse than that to me," Draco said. "And from the weight you've lost since we parted, I dare say it does the same to you."

Harry put one hand defensively over his belly. Weight? What was Draco talking about? He had noticed that his robes draped a little more loosely over him lately, but—

Then he saw the way Draco was moving closer, step by step and inch by inch, and recognized the words for the distraction technique they were. His throat throbbed and his cock, which he'd been able to ignore until that moment, was warm enough to almost compel him to squeeze it.

"Her happiness is built on a lie, anyway," Draco breathed. "I'll see that lie shattered and you where you belong."

"I've lied so many times," Harry said. "To you, to myself, to her. But this was the original lie. I married her because I didn't think I could fall in love with anyone, that Voldemort had damaged me because I had a Horcrux in my head. She never would have married me without that. It was my own fault. Why can't I preserve that one lie, the lie that makes her happy and my friends content?"

Draco paused, eyebrows rising. "I ought to know that you wouldn't have married her for a selfish reason," he murmured. "But that doesn't answer your question, or mine. You _did _fall in love. You belong with me. Right now, three people are unhappy, since I can't imagine that she hasn't noticed something. Come with me, divorce her, and two people will be happy, and only one distressed."

"A lot more than that," Harry said bitterly. "The Weasleys will be upset. I'll probably lose my best friends. I—"

"You're not really afraid of that."

Harry swallowed. He looked back at Draco's face, proud and calm, and the bright eyes that never wavered. He wished for a dark moment that they had never been Auror partners, that Draco had never learned to read him so well.

"I—no," he said.

"Then I don't understand why you stay." Draco ran one finger thoughtfully along his temple, tracing the line of an old scar that Harry had often followed with his eyes but never asked him about. "You've admitted that you're not in love with her. You can't care about hurting her more than you care about hurting me." Harry had to close his eyes at the simple, proud assurance in Draco's voice. "Why, then? What is it that you're so determined to protect?"

"I made a stupid decision," Harry said, feeling as if he were falling off a new cliff with every word he spoke. "It was ignorant and selfish, and I shouldn't have made it. But the least I can do is stick by it now that I've made it, instead of changing my mind."

"Oh, of _course_," Draco said, a flare of contempt returning in his eyes. "I should have known. It's your willingness to play noble martyr that keeps you here."

"I don't _want _to play that role," Harry snapped. "It hurts, you arse."

"I'm sure." Draco looked him over in a leisurely fashion. "Merlin knows why I fell in love with you. Easy on the eyes, yes, but the masochistic streak is rather wide for my preferences." Then he chuckled. "But you've taught me a new emotion. I feel sorry for your Weasley, since I'll win in the end."

"You can't be sure of that," Harry said, clutching with desperate hands to his wavering hope.

"Yes, I can," Draco said. "I can see your eyes." He turned to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Harry called, and cringed. His voice had come out as an abandoned wail.

Draco gave him one more leisurely look. "I'm not going to betray you to your wife," he said calmly. "I think you should make this decision on your own. And your cowardice has to cease being an obstacle between us of your own free will, or there's no reason to think that you won't break and run from _me_, too."

"You're different," Harry said, impulsively.

Stupidly.

Draco's smile was slow and dazzling. Then he faded into the darkness, and left Harry with the ruins of his life falling around his ears.

* * *

He didn't go back up to Ginny. He didn't think that he could stand to lie in the bed beside her and know that he was pretending, that he would wake up to a lie in the morning and a lie in the evening and a lie the next night after that, when they were making love.

He sat in the drawing room instead, and lit a small fire, and eyed the bottle of Firewhisky Ron had got him for a "retirement" present. But then he decided that his thinking was muddled enough already, and turned back to look into the flames.

Even then, Harry really couldn't _think_. His emotions were in too much of a knot. They tangled themselves around his heart and tugged in sixteen separate directions.

Fear. Despair. Anger; how could Draco ask him to hurt Ginny like this? It was only possible because Draco really didn't _care _about Ginny, and Harry knew that, but it was still shitty, that he was willing to hurt Harry by asking him to leave his wife.

_The wife you don't love. The wife you lied to and tricked into marriage._

Harry put his head in his hands. He felt as if he was falling, and on the way down, he tried to grab all the justifications that he'd had for marrying Ginny in the first place.

_She won't be happy with anyone else. She said herself that she'd never fall in love with anyone else._

The merciless response came back, tolling like a bell from hollow walls. _And she could be wrong about that, just as you were. You certainly weren't called on to make her life a joke and your life a sacrifice to her happiness. She never asked for that. She would have laughed at you if you really told her what you were doing._

He fell, faster and faster.

_I fit in so well with her, and with her family. Leaving would devastate everyone—her parents, my friends, her brothers, and her. How can I cause so much hurt for the sake of a happiness that might not last very long anyway? Draco's prickly and offensive, difficult to get along with. I don't know that I'll spend the rest of my life with him. Most likely I'll end up alone and feeling stupid because I made _another _sacrifice and it didn't work._

The answer this time was like the thrust of a sword.

_You're causing more pain by keeping things this way, even if they don't know it yet. Your marriage will fall apart someday. It won't last beside the strength of your own longing, and Draco's. It's better to give in and at least not be cheating on Ginny with Draco, juggling your life with her and your life with him, and lying about that, too. You've never been unfaithful to her in body. Don't start now._

Tumbling, and twisting, and it was as though a vast wind was blowing around Harry that no one but him would ever feel.

_I do love Ginny. Isn't that enough?_

No pause this time between question and answer. _Not enough for you. Not for her. Not for Draco. And you know that your cowardice has grown to the point that it's interfering in your life. Do you want it to start causing them the kind of pain that it's causing you?_

Harry reached the bottom, and an enormous, silent crunch seemed to surge through his body, the knowledge of his own wrongdoing cramping his muscles, breaking his bones.

He had been wrong. He had been stupid. He had known it was a mistake when he made it, that marriage, and he went ahead and made it anyway.

There, at the bottom of the night, Harry drew in one painful breath, and then another.

He had been wrong. He had been stupid. He had known it was a mistake when he made it, that marriage, and he went ahead and made it anyway.

But that wasn't the end. It couldn't be. If it was, then the rest of his life would be only guilt and blame, and no atonement.

And he had to make up for his cowardice and lying in the only way he could: by gathering up his courage, and telling the truth.

Harry lifted his head. The fire had died away to embers. He hadn't noticed when that happened. His breath honked in his lungs. He touched his cheek and came away with tears on his hand that he turned back and forth, staring at them in fascination by the weak light.

He'd always lied this way and tried to avoid the consequences of his mistakes because he was afraid those consequences would be too painful to bear. For a long time, it hadn't seemed as though there was any reason to face up to them, anyway. Why? Everything was going along perfectly well. And then he had fallen in love with Draco, and things had changed, but part of him had still believed the old deception, that what _could _happen was worse than what _was._

Harry smiled. Only now did he realize how very effectively he had lied to himself, along with everyone else.

He touched his face, finding that his nose wasn't broken, his cheeks not shattered, his skull not staved in, despite the overwhelming, hot pressure of his guilt.

Things weren't going to be _easy_. Never that. But they would be better than the way things were right now.

That was why he made the decision, in the end: not because he had realized on his own all the nobility and purity of principle that he'd been neglecting lately, not because he had gazed into Ginny's eyes and realized he couldn't deceive her any longer, but because he was more afraid of one type of pain than another.

But it was better than some other ways the consequences might have fallen out. It was better than Ginny catching him with love bites on his neck, or catching him and Draco fucking.

Harry took comfort in that, and in the fact that he still breathed despite the iron weight of the guilt, as the fire and the night both wound to an end.

* * *

"Ginny? We have to talk."

She knew immediately that tone meant he was serious, and her eyes became quiet. She sat down in the chair in front of the fire, the one Harry had been sitting in when he fell, and stared at him.

Harry spent a minute watching her before he started talking. She had her hands clasped on her knees and was biting her lip to hide her apprehension. All those little gestures he knew, all those little gestures he had no right to. If Ginny _needed _to be in love with and marry someone, he should have left that position open to someone who would appreciate her. And she might do just fine on her own.

"I've been lying to you for a long time," he said. "I think it's time I told the truth."

"You're fucking someone else." Ginny said it flatly, as if that would diminish her pain, but Harry saw the way her hands twisted together. "I should have known, from the way you were trying to avoid sex with me."

Harry shook his head. "No," he said. "But I am in love with someone else, and I'm not in love with you. I married you under false pretenses, to give you a happy life, and because I thought I was damaged and couldn't really love _anyone_."

Ginny sat up straight, her cheeks draining of color, her eyes so big that Harry winced and immediately wished he had broken the news another way. The problem was, he couldn't think of _any _way to break it that wasn't insensitive. It would have been a lot better if he could just have controlled his actions and feelings in the first place.

_This isn't the first time you've fucked up, _he reminded himself, and met her eyes.

"That can't be true," Ginny said, but her voice had a pleading tone to it that Harry knew well. She would believe him when she heard the evidence, although she might not want to. "Is it?"

"It is," Harry said. "I thought I was damaged by Voldemort, because he made me into a Horcrux." Ginny nodded, lips firming as though she was facing a dangerous trek down a cliff. "I tried so hard to date people, to date women or men, to fantasize about people when I wanked, and still, nothing. So I just decided at the end that I wouldn't ever fall in love, and then I heard you talking to Hermione about how I was your one person that you would feel comfortable loving or marrying. I wanted to give you what you wanted."

"You had no right to use that knowledge against me that way," Ginny whispered. She stood up, shaking, and clasped her hands together. Harry kept an eye on them. He wouldn't blame her if she wanted to hex him, but he drew the line at things that could kill him. "No _right_."

"I know," Harry said. "I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make up for the fact that our marriage is a sham!" Ginny spun to face him, her hair flying. She looked ready to kill. Harry told himself that he wasn't _really _in danger, that she had far more right to be upset than he did, and managed to continue sitting. "You never felt _anything _for me, did you?"

"The same kind of love I felt for Hermione," Harry said. He kept his body relaxed, his face open, with an effort, because he had just remembered that Ginny had the same kind of Auror training that he did, the training needed to take down suspects and inflict injuries that would slow them but not kill them. "And concern that, if I could be doing something about your situation and didn't, that would make me a criminal."

"So you decided to do something _far worse _instead." Ginny shut her eyes and snorted through her nose. "Do you deny that it was worse?" she added suddenly, opening one eye and focusing on Harry.

Harry shook his head.

Ginny gave him a look filled with fire and loathing, and Harry winced again, but sat there and took it. So far, he'd got off more lightly than he had any right to expect, and he would do what Ginny asked: explain the situation to her family, give her the house if she wanted it, give up some of his Galleons (though he really didn't think Ginny was that petty). She might demand more than that, once he answered the question she saw gathering in his face.

"Who is it?" she demanded. "It has to be an Auror, because you wouldn't have quit the Auror program without that motivation." Her head moved in a tiny, irritated flick, and Harry knew it was at herself, for failing to put the pieces together.

"Draco," Harry said.

He'd wondered if she would be surprised by the news or just nod grimly. He hadn't realized how much he'd been expecting the second reaction until she staggered back, gripping at the couch, nearly shocked off her feet.

"That's impossible," she whispered. "You said that you tried dating men and they didn't do anything for you."

"Neither did women," Harry said. "If you had been a man, and my friend, and in love with me, I would have settled down with you for the same wrong reasons. It really didn't matter to me."

"It must have," Ginny said, her eyes and cheeks gathering furious heat again. "That's why you couldn't love me, isn't it? Because you're _bent_." Harry flinched at the way she spoke that word, but he reminded himself it wasn't personal, that she was angry at him and not at every man who might be gay.

"I don't know," he said instead. "Maybe that's part of it. But Draco's the only person I've ever been in love with, so I don't know. I'm so sorry, Gin—"

"All this time," Ginny said, "you would have been happier if I had blond hair, and hated you, and had a _cock_."

"No," Harry said. "That's not what drew me to him. It's just the way he trusts me, and the way I worked with him—"

This time, she slapped him. Harry ducked his head, clutching his cheek, and wondered why he'd thought it was a good idea to enumerate Draco's attractive features in front of the wife he was leaving.

"I don't want to hear it," Ginny said coldly above him. "You're going to get out of this house, and go off to your precious _lover. _I'll tell my family, because you can't be trusted with the truth, obviously. Don't try to owl me, or firecall me, or do anything else until I contact you."

Harry could feel the rising urge to justify himself, to argue. But once again, he really was getting off too lightly. He nodded, stood, and walked towards the door. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his wand, but that was enough, considering who he was going towards.

_I really have no right to feel so happy, _he thought as he opened the door.

"Potter."

Harry closed his eyes, feeling the shattered edges of his loss grind against him for the first time since his fall, and looked over his shoulder.

Ginny was standing in the middle of the drawing room, arms folded, glaring at him with eyes that had tears around the edges but were cold in the middle. She was fighting her grief with her rage so very hard, and Harry ached. He would have gone over and taken her in his arms a day ago—hell, half an hour ago.

_My life is changed, but hers is destroyed._

"I'm never going to forgive you for this," Ginny said, and her head dipped for a minute as if she was going to bow it, but she ended up staring at him again. "I want you to know that."

"I'm not going to forgive myself, either," Harry said. "Everything would have been easier if I'd faced up to the truth and had the courage of my convictions in the first place."

"I _hope _I can fall in love with someone other than you," Ginny said bluntly. "And I hope that you and that bastard don't last."

"Just blame me, not him," Harry said. "I'm not going to blame you for anything you want to do to me short of actual assault. But if you hurt him, then I'll make sure you can't anymore."

Ginny made a choked sound and turned away. "Get the fuck out of here," she said, her voice filled with so many emotions Harry could have spent a lifetime naming them all.

Harry went.

* * *

His first stop was Gringotts, to pull out enough Galleons to live on for a few months. He didn't know what would happen there, what Ginny would demand or do or ask. His vault was hers, too, under the marriage agreements, and it wasn't impossible that she would empty it.

But it was hard to think about that, when he was thinking about the future instead.

_You _are _selfish, _he accused himself as he ducked through Diagon Alley and into the Leaky Cauldron to get some breakfast. _Think about Ginny and feel sorry for what you did to her, rather than plotting what's going to happen next._

He was wise enough about his former lies to know what would happen if he tried, though. He would invent excuses to think about Draco, excuses to pity himself, and excuses to be rude to Ginny when she contacted him. It was better to acknowledge that he was flawed and do what he could to make up for actual crimes, rather than trying to control his thoughts.

_I can go to him now, _Harry thought, and licked crumbs off his fingers as he finished a meat pie. _Assuming that he wants to see me._

He did hesitate then, wondering if he should find a place to live first, or owl and see if Draco actually wanted to meet with him. But then he stood up, shook his head, and deposited a handful of Galleons on the table to pay for the meal.

_I have to get used to acting bravely again, and making apologies rather than excuses._

* * *

The gates of Malfoy Manor were shut when Harry first Apparated onto the path that led to them, but by the time he looked up from dusting himself off, they had opened. Harry raised an eyebrow. The only way he knew of doing that would be to tune the wards to him.

He walked slowly down the path, watching the white peacocks. They fanned out their tails and released agitated cries when they saw him. Harry wondered what the Malfoys kept them for. Sure, they made noise, but there were more efficient alarm systems. He couldn't imagine they added much to the decorative effect of the grounds, either, not with what they must produce in shit and scattered feathers.

Then he realized that was something he could ask Draco about, if he wanted to. He had that ability now, that permission. Harry smiled and quickened his pace.

Before he could knock at the door, a droopy-eared elf opened it and eyed him dubiously. Harry nodded to the little creature. "Could you tell Auror Malfoy that Harry Potter is here, please?" If Lucius was here at the moment, he thought that would clear up any confusion about which Malfoy he wanted.

"Harry?"

The voice made Harry shudder. He craned his neck over the elf's head and saw Draco standing halfway down the stairs, foot apparently extended to move to the next step, his eyes wide with wonder.

"Hullo," Harry said, and felt absurdly shy. He became aware that his clothes were rumpled, his hair unwashed, his mouth stinking of morning breath. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at his boots. "I left Ginny. I thought I'd come here."

"Left her?" Draco utterly disregarded the house-elf as an audience, coming further down the stairs and watching Harry with greedy eyes, and so Harry did his best to straighten his shoulders and do the same thing. "Or left the house?"

"Left them both behind, probably for good, unless she doesn't want the house in the divorce," Harry said, and met his eyes squarely. "I chose you."

He'd imagined Draco would fling himself into his arms, but he should have known better than that. Draco wasn't so demonstrative (unless he was crazed with longing and the fury that came from Harry running away, it seemed). He took a deep, quiet breath now and unfolded his hands, as if he'd been holding something captive in them he finally let go.

Then he came down the stairs and reached for Harry's arm. Harry walked past the house-elf into the maze of twisting corridors that seemed to take up the ground floor of Malfoy Manor and tried not to be overwhelmed by the marble and ivory and alabaster splendor of it all.

As it turned out, that was easy. He couldn't spare much attention for those riches when Draco's body pressed a blazing line against his side.

They ended up in a small room that might have been a library or a study or something in between. Two shelves of books stood against the wall furthest from the window, but comfortable islands of chairs and tables dotted the wide carpet leading towards the fireplace, and the windowsill was broad enough to serve as another seat. All of it was decorated in white and gold. Harry caught a brief glimpse of the gardens before Draco pushed him into a chair and stood over him, staring down.

"You came," he whispered. "I never thought you would."

Harry looked at him, and let his anger rise to the surface instead of suppressing it because he had no right to feel it over something Draco had done. He could _do _that now, he told himself. It wasn't the most thrilling freedom he had experienced since confessing the truth to Ginny, but it was one of the best. "What was all that snogging and snarling about, then?" he asked. "If you thought you didn't have a chance at getting me to wake up and see how much I was hurting everyone involved—"

"I never thought it would be like this," Draco interrupted, with a shake of his head. "I thought you would sneak away from your wife at least once. I thought there would be a speech about how we couldn't sleep together when your lips were still swollen from sucking my cock." His eyes met Harry's, direct and honest although his words were scathing. "I thought, in other words, that you'd continue to act exactly the way you have all along."

Harry winced. He deserved that one. But he still shook his head. "No," he said. "You woke me up. I went through—a revelation last night. I couldn't make Ginny happy, and that would have been the only reason to stay married to her. And I can't ignore being in love with you. If I could, I would probably still have tried it," he added.

Draco scowled in turn. _Well, it's better to be honest than anything else right now, _Harry thought, but he felt a tremor of fear. Ginny could be right. He and Draco might not last.

But he and Ginny never would have.

"I'm kind of amazed that you fell in love with me," Harry said, and managed to laugh despite everything when Draco rolled his eyes. "Really, how did you? I was acting like a friend most of the time, and then like an arse the last few months."

Draco sat down on the table right in front of Harry's chair, his knee jogging. Harry wondered why he didn't take a chair himself, and realized a moment later that the table was the closest piece of furniture to him. He smiled, swallowed, and waited.

"I could see the compassion you had for me shining through despite all that," Draco said. "Once I got over thinking it was pity—which wasn't easy, let me tell you—then I started to appreciate it. You made an honest effort to work with me, against factors greater than I knew about at the time. You defended your friends without acting like I was evil or stupid for criticizing them. You trusted me. You were a good Auror." He abruptly turned his head and pinned Harry with a hard stare. "You _are _going back to that."

"Probably," Harry admitted. "Of course, they might not let _partners _be partners." _If that's what we are._

"I know," Draco said. He stood up. Harry waited for him to turn away or pace in a circle; he was moving as restlessly as though he intended to do that.

Instead, he bent down and kissed Harry again, more fiercely than he had when driving him into the wall outside Ginny's house.

Harry groaned, "_Fuck_," in return, which made Draco chuckle, and reached up to wrap his arms around Draco's neck and drag him onto his lap. Draco gave in with a gasp, and then Harry was holding him in place and could snog him all he liked.

His tongue went deeper. His hands learned a million different textures of Draco's hair, and then he forgot them all in the middle of Draco's taste. He grunted and tried to get closer still, while Draco's elbow nudged him in the gut and his knee caught Harry's shoulder in odd places.

"Yes, this," Draco panted when Harry released his mouth for a moment to find a more comfortable position. He didn't explain what he meant, but he didn't need to. He bit Harry's chin, licked soothingly at the mark he'd left, and then pushed Harry against the back of the chair in return.

Harry didn't think it was fair, how breathless he was getting or how hard. He reached under Draco's shirt and pinched his nipple in retaliation.

Draco cried out in shock, and Harry pinched again. Then Draco imitated the tactic, and Harry groaned and sighed and whimpered, releasing all the sounds that he had been obliged to fake with Ginny.

_I'm not thinking about her right now, _Harry decided, and thought instead about the bluntness of Draco's nail as it scraped over the edge of his nipple.

They got out of the chair and towards the bedroom somehow. They stumbled into walls on the way, bruising their elbows and heels and heads, but it didn't matter. Harry could so easily dissolve pain into pleasure that even the teasing thoughts of Ginny melted away at last, and he was left with Draco's restless hands and bright, frantic eyes.

Only when they fell onto a large bed with soft sheets, after a progression through doors and stairs that Harry couldn't have traced by himself, did he realize that they hadn't agreed on what to do, what would happen next. He pulled back a little from Draco's mouth and hesitated, gasping in air as much as courage.

"Oh, for the love of—" Draco lifted himself to one elbow and managed to make it seem as if he was looming above Harry, even though he was just lying beside him. "If you tell me that you're having an existential crisis about this _now_, after everything we've gone through to get here, I'm going to kick you out of bed."

"You wouldn't do that," Harry said, grinning in spite of all the doubts. "You want me too much."

"Then maybe I'll Stun you and fuck you that way," Draco retorted, blinking hard to get the sweat out of his eyes. "There _are _options, you know."

Harry laughed and reached out to kiss him again. He had wanted to hear that voice, he thought, sounding exactly like _that_. He had wanted to hear Draco being upset and indignant and irreverent. He wanted to hear him sounding irritated and happy and tired, too, for the rest of his life.

_I thought I would be with Ginny for the rest of my life._

Harry reminded himself that he was allowed to consider other things sometimes besides how badly he'd fucked up, and turned his head so that he could eye Draco more closely. "How about I fuck you first, and then you fuck me?"

"No," Draco said. "The other way around. This is the first time I've done this."

Harry blinked, started to open his mouth, and then remembered that he had been with men before, at least, when he was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. Besides, he had to admit to a stir of curiosity about what would happen if he let Draco inside him first. Not that it would make Draco perfect, or anything, but he wanted to _know_, with the same devouring, greedy eagerness that he'd felt since he'd come into the house today.

"All right," he whispered, and lay back, pulling the rest of his clothes off. Draco knelt there for a moment, either transfixed by Harry's naked skin or astonished that Harry had agreed to let him go first, and then shook his head and got up from the bed.

Harry looked around when he'd dropped all the clothes off the side of the bed, and blinked. The bedroom was—calmer than he'd thought it would be. Draco seemed to like landscape paintings, most of them showing tame green park-like settings, small single trees, and pools of water. The ceiling was curved and arched, along with the canopy of the bed, but not in any outrageous way. Here and there was a touch of gold or bronze or jade, but Draco seemed to have much better taste than Harry had known.

"Here," Draco said, and clambered back into bed with him, carrying a little sealed pot of blue liquid. Harry picked up a dab on his fingers and wrinkled his nose at how cold it was. Draco apparently took the expression in another way and drew back, folding into himself like a crab.

"If you can't do this," he said, but Harry grabbed the back of his neck and bit his lips until he got the idea and rolled the lube between his fingers to warm it. Then he reached down, fingers skimming between Harry's legs and back.

His other hand, with no warning whatsoever, closed over Harry's cock.

"_Fuck_," Harry said, and dug his heels into the bed, and thrust up. He had no idea what direction Draco was in; the room had started spinning lazily, and he wanted to keep his eyes closed, anyway. It seemed to be the only way to deal with the sharp-edged sensation flowing through his body, like warm wire.

"Yes," Draco said, and he could have meant the word in any of several senses. He dug into Harry's arse with his fingers, and Harry would have said something about roughness, but combined with the stroking on his cock it felt like the best thing in the world.

He forced his eyes open, because there were sights he didn't want to miss no matter how good it felt, and saw Draco studying his erection with his forehead wrinkled as if he was afraid that he might touch it wrong. That was the same expression he used when he was worrying over the details of a case, and Harry remembered, as strongly as he'd ever remembered anything, the way Draco had felt pressed against him as they crouched under Disillusionment Charms in a dirty alley, waiting for their target to reveal himself.

"It's all right," Harry said.

Draco snatched his head up in one jerk and sniffed. "I _know _that," he said, but Harry'd seen the flash of his eyes and knew how grateful he was for the reassurance. "Like this—let me—down, right?"

And then Harry was swept up and caught up in a new experience. Whatever Draco might think, this was as new for him as it was for Draco. Harry had always felt vaguely pleased whenever someone fucked him or fingered him, but it was missing that passion he saw in other people's faces.

Now he felt it himself, and it was like being pressed against sweaty skin, caught up in a dream, with no way out, no way to draw back. He gasped and whimpered and cried, and that was before Draco had more than a single finger in him. When Draco started to ease his cock in, Harry realized, for the first time, that he could break apart, not just make someone else break, the way he had with Ginny.

He reached up and clutched Draco's shoulders. Draco paused in slinging one of Harry's legs around his waist and stroked his hand. "It's all right," he whispered.

Harry wondered when _he'd _started reassuring instead of challenging, but he was thinking more about the edge of the cock in him, the keen pleasure cutting at him, sawing at him, and the way that he could lose himself in just the way Draco's eyelashes trembled and fluttered with the beginning of sensation.

"It's so sharp," Harry said helplessly. "Why is it so sharp?"

Draco caught his breath, and then triumph flushed his face. "Because that's the way it's supposed to be," he said, sinking home in Harry and groaning and sighing his way around the words. Harry knew he must have paused at least once to speak the longer sentences, but that wasn't the way it was in his memory, where the words and the wordless sounds mingled. "When you love someone."

"Oh," Harry said quietly, and then arched his back again as he realized, really _realized_, that Draco was inside him and there was no escape.

No moving away from this, no releasing himself from the clutch of Draco's arms around him, tight and gripping, the clasp of someone else's embrace, the bite of teeth here and there, the tangle and trap of Draco's hair around his fingers, the wideness of his eyes and the helpless clucking of his tongue.

No moving away from the weight of his tongue inside his own mouth, and the openness of his arse, and the pleasure and the pain and the passion that swept through him and drowned him, again and again and _again_, as implacable as sickness.

No moving away from how he felt when Draco's grip tightened and he hammered home, or when Draco froze and quivered, or from the orgasm that stalked him, stroked him, and shook him as if it would break his neck.

There was one way, Harry thought as he lay there in the aftermath, that sex with Ginny had been good for him, too. He'd been _safe._ He could watch Ginny's face as she broke apart and enjoy physical pleasure without being caught up like this.

He was never going to be safe again.

"Stop thinking about her," Draco ordered, and seized Harry's chin to kiss him, drowning Harry's denial that he hadn't been, not really.

* * *

"There aren't any words for what you did."

Harry nodded. He was standing in the Burrow, in the middle of the day after he'd been accepted back into the Auror ranks. Ron was standing in front of him, his back turned as though he could make Harry cease to exist by not looking at him. His arms were folded so tightly they made his shoulders bulge.

Harry was getting used to that by now. Draco's parents had decided that nothing remarkable had happened and their son was not dating Harry Potter, and looking in another direction that wouldn't force them to meet Harry's eyes was one of their favorite tactics.

"Ginny's going to be years recovering," Ron said, and stared at Harry hostilely over his shoulder. "And I don't know if we can be friends anymore."

"I know," Harry said. "I'm sorry. I really would have liked it if things could have worked out differently."

"They _could_ have," Ron said, turning around and laying his hands on the kitchen table as if he was going to rock it on its foundations. Harry would have preferred that. All his friends and all the Weasleys had been quietly disgusted and self-contained. He could have dealt with accusations accompanied with hexes. But they were on the reasonable side, and he wasn't, and he had to keep remembering that. "Don't you dare tell me that you couldn't have resisted Malfoy's seductions. I _know _the git, remember? He isn't that attractive."

Harry blinked a little. Then he said, "I fell in love with him. If I'd been honest and the kind of person I really thought I was, I would have told Ginny the minute I realized."

"If you'd been honest and the kind of person _I _thought you were," Ron said harshly, "you never would have married her in the first place."

Harry stared at the floor. He didn't understand his emotions. He thought either his guilt or his happiness should have been steady, but instead he went back and forth between self-scorn that left him feeling lacerated and joy that ripped pieces out of him. "I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make it better," Ron said.

"I know," Harry said. "Would anything?"

Ron did rock the table this time, and his face flushed. Harry was glad. He felt like he was dealing with his best mate again, not some polite stranger. "You _wanker. _If you think we're going to start liking you again because you offer us money or—"

"That's not what I meant," Harry said. "I mean, does Ginny want anything specific in the divorce settlement? Or is there anything I could do that would make you lot more comfortable?" Ron stared at him, and Harry stared back, trying to drop whatever masks across his face were keeping Ron from seeing what he really felt. He _was _distressed. He _was _sorry. He wasn't going to walk away from Draco, and he'd been wrong in the first place, but he wasn't cheerful about his losing his friends and his wife and his adopted family, either.

Ron licked his lips. "Leave him."

"No," Harry said.

"You said _anything_," Ron said, and folded his arms.

"It wouldn't really solve the problem," Harry said. "You know it wouldn't. I would still be in love with him, and not with Ginny."

"Why _not_?" Ron drew his wand. Harry kept his hands tucked down. He didn't think Ron would really hurt him—maybe turn his tongue green or temporarily blind him, but no worse than that. Ron was just as hurt and bewildered and caught between difficult choices as Harry was, if not more. "Why couldn't you fall in love with her?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "It was just—something that happened. And my falling in love with Malfoy is just something that happened. I think it's best that I finally stopped lying. Ginny deserved better than everything I did to her, but she especially deserved better than any longer in a marriage that was a lie."

Ron gripped his wand hard enough that Harry was afraid he would break his fingers. "You had some preparation. Her life just fell apart one day."

"I know," Harry said. He hadn't seen or heard from Ginny since the day he'd walked away from her, a fortnight ago now. He thought maybe it would be best for both of them if they never did meet again. "I'm sorry."

"You _keep saying that._" Ron leaned his palm against his forehead. "And the answer is that I don't know either, all right? I don't know what Ginny wants yet, other than to be divorced as fast as possible. I don't know what to make of you. Hermione doesn't want to speak to you again. Mum wants to try. It's just—it's very complicated."

"All right," Harry said gently. He had come to this meeting today hoping to settle everything, but he realized now that that'd been stupid. If they could go along by little, small steps, one at a time, that would work best, and maybe they would someday get back where they needed to be. "I'll wait for your next owl."

Ron nodded at him, and then turned violently away and pretended to study a spiderweb on the windowsill. Harry walked out of the Burrow, into the light drizzle there, and then paused as he felt a hand touch the small of his back.

"I know you're there, Draco," he whispered. "Under that bloody Disillusionment Charm. I told you not to come."

Draco moved up beside him, from the sound of the footsteps, and murmured, "He might have hurt you badly. I couldn't allow that."

"Ron wouldn't do that," Harry said, but he could already picture the doubtful look on Draco's face, even without being able to see it. He shook his head and extended one arm. He couldn't blame his friends for distrusting his lover or vice versa, not when he was the only link between them right now. "Come on, let's go home."

Draco's fingers closed down tightly on Harry's arm, the way they always did when Harry called Malfoy Manor home. And he was the one who Apparated them, the wetness on Harry's face translating abruptly to the shaded dryness under the portico in front of the Manor. Draco dropped the Charm and turned to face him, holding out his arms.

Harry stepped forwards, deciding that Ron wasn't the only one who'd needed the confirmation that he wouldn't walk away from Draco, and then drowned him in a kiss. Or tried. He thought Draco was still better than that, since he'd felt passion long before Harry had.

But he was learning.

_Draco's taught me about courage, _he thought as he pulled back and stared into Draco's face. _And honesty. And love. But he can't teach me everything. I think I'll always be learning._

* * *

That was the fourth step.

**The End.**


End file.
